Comments on: Red Hat Acquires JBoss: The Q&A http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2006/04/11/red-hat-acquires-jboss-the-qa/ because technology is just another ecosystem Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:31:54 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: James Governor's MonkChips http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2006/04/11/red-hat-acquires-jboss-the-qa/#comment-1874 James Governor's MonkChips Thu, 13 Apr 2006 12:27:35 +0000 http://redmonk.com/sogrady/wp/?p=795#comment-1874 <strong>Stephen goes to town on Red Hat/JBoss acquisition</strong> I jotted down a few thoughts the other day but Stephen is the deep thinker on open source business models. So I was pleased when he got another one of his famous Q&As done. Go read it here. "If one... Stephen goes to town on Red Hat/JBoss acquisition

I jotted down a few thoughts the other day but Stephen is the deep thinker on open source business models. So I was pleased when he got another one of his famous Q&As done. Go read it here. "If one…

]]> By: james governor http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2006/04/11/red-hat-acquires-jboss-the-qa/#comment-1873 james governor Thu, 13 Apr 2006 12:24:48 +0000 http://redmonk.com/sogrady/wp/?p=795#comment-1873 great stuff stephen. thanks all for your comments and clarifications great stuff stephen. thanks all for your comments and clarifications

]]> By: stephen ogrady http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2006/04/11/red-hat-acquires-jboss-the-qa/#comment-1872 stephen ogrady Thu, 13 Apr 2006 02:18:17 +0000 http://redmonk.com/sogrady/wp/?p=795#comment-1872 stephe: thx very much for the clarification. cygwin's an important package, so that's a good catch. Mike: i think we're in agreement here. as i think everyone would admit, however, it's always difficult to predict how individual developers will react and what other firms might do to poach them. either way, it'll be the developers that provide the real value here. Luis: excellent point, and i'll have more to say on this later. Microsoft's Don Dodge just posted another "nobody works for free" etc post, and i think you're comment speaks to that nicely. finance is an important part of the comp package, but it's not the only part: interesting work is equally important to some. stephe: thx very much for the clarification. cygwin’s an important package, so that’s a good catch.

Mike: i think we’re in agreement here. as i think everyone would admit, however, it’s always difficult to predict how individual developers will react and what other firms might do to poach them. either way, it’ll be the developers that provide the real value here.

Luis: excellent point, and i’ll have more to say on this later. Microsoft’s Don Dodge just posted another “nobody works for free” etc post, and i think you’re comment speaks to that nicely. finance is an important part of the comp package, but it’s not the only part: interesting work is equally important to some.

]]> By: Luis http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2006/04/11/red-hat-acquires-jboss-the-qa/#comment-1871 Luis Wed, 12 Apr 2006 14:21:33 +0000 http://redmonk.com/sogrady/wp/?p=795#comment-1871 Don't have too much time to comment on this right now, but I'd note that the thing that Matt overlooked in discussing the Novell acquisition of Ximian and SUSE is that most of the developers in those organizations (and I assume in JBoss, though I have no way of knowing) were in it at least as much because of interest in open source and in the product as because of any financial incentive. So the key challenge in keeping them, then, is to make them feel that the company is doing the right thing to move the product forward and to allow the contributors to keep working in the open source community. SuSE has been hemorraging people of late because they disagree with Novell's strategy; Ximian has been mostly convinced that Novell's strategy is working, and the key people get to do interesting work in their respective communities anyway, so they have mostly stuck around. Financial incentives don't hurt, of course (I'm sure IBM could easily lure away the JBoss dev team by doubling their salaries and promising that they'll do exactly the same work as at RH, for example) but for most engineers in the open source space it isn't why they got in in the first place, so it won't be the primary reason why they leave. Don’t have too much time to comment on this right now, but I’d note that the thing that Matt overlooked in discussing the Novell acquisition of Ximian and SUSE is that most of the developers in those organizations (and I assume in JBoss, though I have no way of knowing) were in it at least as much because of interest in open source and in the product as because of any financial incentive. So the key challenge in keeping them, then, is to make them feel that the company is doing the right thing to move the product forward and to allow the contributors to keep working in the open source community. SuSE has been hemorraging people of late because they disagree with Novell’s strategy; Ximian has been mostly convinced that Novell’s strategy is working, and the key people get to do interesting work in their respective communities anyway, so they have mostly stuck around. Financial incentives don’t hurt, of course (I’m sure IBM could easily lure away the JBoss dev team by doubling their salaries and promising that they’ll do exactly the same work as at RH, for example) but for most engineers in the open source space it isn’t why they got in in the first place, so it won’t be the primary reason why they leave.

]]> By: Mike Olson http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2006/04/11/red-hat-acquires-jboss-the-qa/#comment-1870 Mike Olson Wed, 12 Apr 2006 14:05:34 +0000 http://redmonk.com/sogrady/wp/?p=795#comment-1870 Thanks for a very thoughtful analysis, Steve. Like you, I believe that one of the big variables here is RHAT's ability to retain the JBoss development team. Given the fact that the code is LGPL'ed, neither JBoss Inc. nor (now) Red Hat has absolute control over the intellectual property. As a result, the only advantage in providing support for JBoss is having the people. If JBoss' engineers leave in substantial numbers, other platform vendors could pick them up -- Sun, for example, or IBM. Whatever failures of vision Marc may have pointed out at Red Hat in the past, it's pretty clear that it is a developer-friendly organization. I'm sure that the leadership there has thought hard about retention of the team. I look forward to seeing how Marc's own role develops at Red Hat. Michael Tiemann has long been the technical voice for the company, with Matthew Szulik speaking to the public markets. Marc's style is very different from either of those guys. Thanks for a very thoughtful analysis, Steve.
Like you, I believe that one of the big variables here is RHAT’s ability to retain the JBoss development team. Given the fact that the code is LGPL’ed, neither JBoss Inc. nor (now) Red Hat has absolute control over the intellectual property. As a result, the only advantage in providing support for JBoss is having the people. If JBoss’ engineers leave in substantial numbers, other platform vendors could pick them up — Sun, for example, or IBM.
Whatever failures of vision Marc may have pointed out at Red Hat in the past, it’s pretty clear that it is a developer-friendly organization. I’m sure that the leadership there has thought hard about retention of the team.
I look forward to seeing how Marc’s own role develops at Red Hat. Michael Tiemann has long been the technical voice for the company, with Matthew Szulik speaking to the public markets. Marc’s style is very different from either of those guys.

]]> By: stephe http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2006/04/11/red-hat-acquires-jboss-the-qa/#comment-1869 stephe Wed, 12 Apr 2006 05:07:24 +0000 http://redmonk.com/sogrady/wp/?p=795#comment-1869 Red Hat does actually support product on other platforms. The (acquired) cygwin project continues to be hosted and managed at http://cygwin.com/, but the cygwin product (http://www.redhat.com/software/cygwin/) is supported for a fee by Red Hat and indeed presumably they have sufficient copyright control because they also offer it under a non-GPL license for those that wish to use it as a porting base for their distributed closed source software product (similar to the MySQL OEM business). Red Hat does actually support product on other platforms. The (acquired) cygwin project continues to be hosted and managed at http://cygwin.com/, but the cygwin product (http://www.redhat.com/software/cygwin/) is supported for a fee by Red Hat and indeed presumably they have sufficient copyright control because they also offer it under a non-GPL license for those that wish to use it as a porting base for their distributed closed source software product (similar to the MySQL OEM business).

]]>