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by Hugo Pinto.
Original Post: JBoss J2EE Certification. What is JBoss, after all?
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According to this article, the JBoss Application Server will probably become J2EE certified soon. This piece of news alone would usually make me jump in joy. Somehow, it does not. Elizabeth Montalbano writes, in the article, a series of sentences that shows either a small reporter misconception regarding JBoss or the general industry perception of the JBoss world.
The general article one is that "open-source software vendor JBoss" (not JBoss Group) is "in the process of negotiating a J2EE license with Sun and has agreed to pay the company the required fees to obtain the license", as Natalie, Marc Fleury's wife and spokeswoman for JBoss Group, says.
Funny stuff, is that, reading the article:
1. The boundaries regarding JBoss THE SERVER and JBoss Group THE COMPANY are completely gone. Reading the article, I got the feeling that "JBoss" and "JBoss Group" are interchangeable terms.
2. JBoss Group's role is less than clear in this process: it becomes a mistery who exactly certifies JBoss: The consortium that upholds the integrity of JBoss's source? [who?]; or a comercial for-profit company that is in direct competition with other companies in the JBoss support market? [again, who?]
There is a number of individuals within JBoss Group, whatever it's role is, that will get access to previledged information that may or may not drive the server's spec compliance, and they will use that infomation to request code fixes to other developers in order for the servce to be compliant. These persons should be a comitee of representatives of the server's code base (the object of the certification), not one of the (many) companies supplying services on top of JBoss. Too bad that only one of these companies belongs to the person that owns the JBoss brand.
While reading JBoss articles these days, I have the strangest feeling that either a) I am one of the few finding these misconceptions stange, or b) the whole world is slowly accepting that JBoss is, actually, Marc's company sole property.
For the good evolution of both JBoss THE SERVER and JBoss' user community (the ones I, every day, have to explain that the split between JBoss Group and CDN should not affect the server's code)'s sake, I really think that a clarificarion in the order of the day. JBoss Group was a nice idea when everyone were friends: all of the people were in the same gang, looking the same way. This is not what happens nowadays - there are TWO ROLES to be played, that cannot be merged onto one anymore, as they have always been until now.
A JBoss Consortium (or something like that) should be formed. This entity would be responsible for both the code base and the brand, and would be a non-profit organization. It should be composed of a representative subset of code contributors (JBG or not) and THEY sould be the ones that would certify the server, and keep track of brand compliance.
JBoss Group, Core Developers Network, and any other JBoss-services company would keep their business as usual. They would focus on making money over JBoss - no harm with that - preferably not using the brand's logo, or previledged information for their own benefit.
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