Can Blogs Survive Writer Losses?

It’s one thing for firms to decide who can and can’t post at the company blog, and to change that lineup at a whim. But once content has been contributed by an author, should it stay up there when the author departs for another job?

The issue proves just as relevant to websites where an author’s work forms the reason for pages to be created and posted in the first place. Sun Microsystem’s chief open source officer Simon Phipps blogged about what he has seen from his former employer, IBM, when it comes to people blowing out of Big Blue.

Phipps left IBM for Sun in 2000, and although he had been mentioned in several places on IBM’s site, those references are being removed. He also noted the “father of Websphere,” Don Ferguson, has been subject to similar editing, evidently for the sin of joining Microsoft.

Websphere has been a fixture in IBM’s Internet strategy for several years. It is an important part of their corporate efforts to gain and keep customers not just for Websphere but for other products like the DB2 database.

Whitewashing Ferguson out of Websphere’s past seems petty at best, malicious at worst. Evidently it will not be a situation that repeats itself at Sun. Phipps wrote of the blogging strategy their CEO and well-known techie blogger Jonathan Schwartz have built to address possible Sun blogger departures:

In true corporate tradition, Schwartz even put a positive spin on this policy and employees who leave. “One of Jonathan’s motivations for this was also so that people could pick up where they left off when they rejoined Sun!” said Phipps.

If someone’s information was good enough to post in 2006, it should still be good enough to keep online. Disposing of content or of the acknowledgment of someone’s contribution to a company’s success seems like an idea that should be tossed out with the trash.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Thought I’d try and clear up some of the confusion..

This shouldn’t be an “is A better than B?” discussion.

WAS CE is built using an open source product, Apache Geronimo. Like Apache Geronimo, WAS CE is free to download and use, and you can build it yourself from open source code. Unlike Apache Geronimo, WAS CE however does not carry an OSI-approved license, and as such, is not an open source product. WAS CE is built on an open source product. Developers are using WAS CE and Apache Geronimo; it all depends on what you’re need/comfort is.

If you want the newest stuff right away, then you’ll use Geronimo. If you want predictable release cycles, then WAS CE will fit the bill. If you want to modify the source code, fix bugs yourself or create a derivative work, then pick Geronimo. If you want integration with other IBM products and broad platform/database support, then take a peak at WAS CE. Both are free, or optionally, supported for a fee through IBM and others, so have at it!

From a technical standpoint the WAS CE team takes Geronimo and

Removes/Replaces:

• Jetty: because Geronimo comes in two flavors, one with Jetty as the JSP/Servlet engine, and the other with Tomcat as the JSP/Servlet engine. WAS CE only supports Tomcat.
• Apache Derby: Derby is used as an internal data store for Geronimo, but is also exposed so that users can write their application data into Derby without having to get another database or do the integration. IBM Cloudscape is IBM’s free and supported version of Derby. I’m not the Derby/Cloudscape expert, but from what I remember, they are identical at the bits/bytes level. In any case, you get Cloudscape with WAS CE mainly so IBM can provide you support for the database. If you buy support for WAS CE, you automatically get free support for the copy of Cloudscape that comes with WAS CE; no separate contract, no separate charges.
• Apache Directory Server: Mainly because users told us early on that they already have a company mandated’ directory server. So why give them something very few are going to need/use (we do support Apache DS though).
• Servicemix: When we first made this decision it was because customers and partners had told us to be careful to introduce technology in WAS CE that was (1) fully baked and (2) was supported in the rest of the WebSphere Application Server family of products. Servicemix didn’t fit the bill at the time. This one may change with future releases of WAS CE, but don’t quote me though as I don’t have a say anymore

Adds:

• Integration: Hooks into other IBM products like Rational Application Developer, WebSphere MQ etc.
• Growth Path: migration path from WAS CE to the rest of the WebSphere Application Server family of products.
• Bundled IBM JDK: or you can download WAS CE without a JDK. You can also use the Sun JDK. (More here)
• Platform Support: Support for Red Hat RHEL, Novell SLES, Red Flag Data Center, Fedora, Mandriva, AIX, Solaris, Windows XP & 2003. (More here) NOTE: Geronimo has different binaries for Windows & Unix (including Linux & Mac OS X), but does not make an explicit OS support statement. You can try using it with any operating system you like, if it doesn’t work, try the Geronimo mailing list for help. Or if you have paid for support, see which operating systems your support provider supports.
• JDBC Drivers: Bundles JDBC drivers for Oracle, DB2, MySQL and MS SQL Server to give you broad DB support (More here)
• Directory Support: Support for Apache Directory Server, IBM Tivoli Directory Server, MS Active Directory, OpenLDAP Server. (More here)
• IBM documentation: Docs, samples and plenty of WAS CE resources on developerWorks

As you may be able to tell, there are few major technical differences between Geronimo & WAS CE. We made the decision early on to stay as close to Geronimo as we could and still be able to give IBM customers what they expect out of an IBM product. The general WAS CE vision is to do as much work as we can out in the Geronimo community. In doing this, Geronimo users and WAS CE users get to benefit from the new features etc. (like we did with the console & Eclipse plug-in).

Hope this helped some of you out. If you have questions, just leave a comment or drop a line at savioTHIRTEEN (use the number instead of the word) at gmail.

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I am taking a semi-break from IBM life as I return to finish a PhD in Industrial Engineering. I’ve held roles in market intelligence, strategy and product management. I’m ex-product manager of IBM WAS Community Edition, and blog about enterprise open source topics.

You’re correct that OSS is changing the game, but if the OSS community sticks to its vision of a 100% OSS world, in which commercial software is something your father used, then you’re going to see aggressive moves by vendors like Oracle & Microsoft bent on protecting their turf. The truth is that the future of the software market lies in the mutual existence of the OSS & commercial software business models. Neither is going away anytime soon, or ever. So, if we accepted this outcome, and toned down the rhetoric, there would be a better chance of educating vendors like Microsoft & Oracle to the benefits of adding open source products into their product lines without poisoning the communities that develop said products.

At the end of the day, customers want high quality software, support, performance, reliability, scalability and availability for the best price. Sometimes OSS will be the answer for the project. Other times it will be a commercial product. It comes down to customer choice.

One can argue that customers are better off with OSS because they can see the code and aren’t locked-in. However, I think that’s a simplistic view, and for the average customer, one that isn’t supported in practice and especially since mature OSS vendors inevitably start looking very much like mature commercial vendors.

Take a look at what IBM WebSphere did with our support for Apache Geronimo, and building an IBM product based on Geronimo. Not only has the WebSphere Application Server revenue growth remained healthy compared to our commercial & open source competition, we’ve been able to truly get involved and help the Geronimo community innovate. Customers have been big winners here (well, so have we!).

There’s a lesson for Microsoft & Oracle in the success of IBM WebSphere & WAS Community Editionif they’d only peer out from under the bed.

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I am taking a semi-break from IBM life as I return to finish a PhD in Industrial Engineering. I’ve held roles in market intelligence, strategy and product management. I’m ex-product manager of IBM WAS Community Edition, and blog about enterprise open source topics.

From the site:

The ColdFusion Portlet Toolkit is a proof-of-concept library that allows you to use ColdFusion as a Portal Application within an IBM WebSphere Portal Server (WSPS version 5 and greater). A Portal Application can serve several different portlets. Every portlet you deploy will run inside the same ColdFusion Portal Application. This toolkit provides one concrete Portlet called CFCPortlet. This Portlet simply passes the requests on to the ColdFusion server. The ColdFusion then invokes CFC methods to render the Portlet, and to perform actions. You can deploy several instances of this Portlet on your Portal Server. The setting cfcName defines which CFC will be used to marshal the Portlet events.

Seems pretty cool. You can find more information here: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/ColdFusion_Portlet_Toolkit

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Raymond Camden, ray@camdenfamily.com
http://ray.camdenfamily.com

Raymond Camden is Vice President of Technology for roundpeg, Inc. A long
time ColdFusion user, Raymond has worked on numerous ColdFusion books
and is the creator of many of the most popular ColdFusion community web
sites. He is an Adobe Community Expert, user group manager, and the
proud father of three little bundles of joy.

We shouldn’t ignore the fact that some of the most useful technologies these days have come from outside a commercial ISV’s doors (i.e. PHP, MySQL or Spring). So, I don’t think we can make the blanket statement that open source growth equals a reduction of innovation. And I don’t think that is Dana’s point.

I wrote that Red Hat is actually spending 3.1x on SG&A than on R&D, compared to an average of 2.6x across IBM, Oracle and Microsoft. On the surface, this could be a double whammy. First, there is less revenue going to established software vendors to pour into R&D, and second the R&D spending of established’ OSS vendors is lower than the proportional R&D spending of their commercial competitors. One could argue that the net result of these two forces should be a reduction in innovation. (We are making the simplifying assumption that R&D investments result in innovations.)

This is a situation where the IBM WebSphere division has done some interesting things. The WebSphere division first decided to use the Apache HTTP server inside of WebSphere Application Server (WAS) vs. the HTTP daemon that was being developed internally. As a result, the development resources that were previously working on the internal HTTPd were assigned to other parts of the WAS team to work on technologies and innovations that customers saw as having differentiated value. In this situation, OSS actually helped to drive innovation from inside a commercial SW vendor by freeing resources to work on innovative technologies.

The next example was the acquisition of Gluecode Software. Through this acquisition, IBM was able to introduce WAS Community Edition (WAS CE) to address the needs of customers there were seeking a light-weight, easy-to-use, free application server, and thereby make some revenue which could feed R&D efforts. It has also allowed IBM to experiment with the OSS business model.

Having WAS CE as a member of the WAS family allows IBM to compete against both commercial application server vendors (BEA) and open source application server vendors (Red Hat/JBoss) in situations where a customer is contemplating open source. So, instead of risking losing such a deal, IBM Is able to offer the customer WAS CE, and thereby gets support revenue. Sure it’s not the same amount as selling a commercial WAS license, but it’s better than not winning the deal. Also, a WAS CE customer gets introduced to the rest of the WAS and IBM Software family of products, so the customer may end up purchasing one of those in the future (equaling more spending with IBM which can go towards future R&D).

Open source and commercial software will continue to exist in a symbiotic relationship for the foreseeable future. The relationship will require commercial vendors to rethink their approaches to building everything vs. building differentiated value on an OSS foundation. And when commercial software vendors start altering their business models, OSS vendors won’t be able to take a business as usual approach either.

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I am taking a semi-break from IBM life as I return to finish a PhD in Industrial Engineering. I’ve held roles in market intelligence, strategy and product management. I’m ex-product manager of IBM WAS Community Edition, and blog about enterprise open source topics.

Mainsoft’s president and CEO Yaacov Cohen said on the company’s website that the MainWin for J2EE, Portal Edition product “takes .NET-WebSphere integration to the next level, offering end users a single point of customizable access to both .NET and Java portlets.”

The technology lets .NET developers rapidly deploy ASP.NET applications as pure JSR 168 portlets. That gives the portal environment access to both Java and ASP.NET applications.

By extending WebSphere Portal’s capabilities to ASP.NET, programmers can craft applications in Java, C#, or VB.NET. Then, application users can access the various applications through portal with a single-sign-on process.

The security model means the portlets created in MainWin can access the authentication and credential vault in WebSphere.

It reduces the number of intrusion points available to an external attacker that could be present in a mix of security solutions.

MainWin should help bring .NET developers into a WebSphere programming environment more quickly.

Developers would not have to learn a new IDE or rewrite .NET code in Java before being able to redeploy it to the Portal.

From their environments, ASP.NET developers can invoke both the JSR 168 and IBM Portal APIs when building applications. And, .NET programmers can invoke Java class libraries and Enterprise JavaBeans methods within their application.

The MainWin for J2EE tool is intended for shops shifting from ASP.NET on Windows machines to WebSphere on Linux boxes.

Mainsoft looks like it is targeting those shops that are cost-sensitive enough to make that kind of switch with the minimum amount of disruption to their development efforts.

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IBM’s support services are called IBM Support for Apache Geronimo, and include two levels of support to help customers resolve technical issues concerning applications that run on Geronimo.

According to a press release, corporate developers may be more likely to choose Geronimo technology now that it is backed by support from IBM. This may lead to Geronimo software becoming more mainstream.

“Today IBM is extending flexibility for Apache Geronimo, not only for support service options, but for the choice of code being used,” stated Robert LeBlanc, general manager, WebSphere, IBM Software Group.

“Developers that want pure open source technology can choose Geronimo, and those that want an open source-based solution with value added features can opt for Gluecode. Now both are backed by support services from IBM.”

IBM acquired Gluecode Software back in May. Gluecode software can help Java developers, small and mid-sized businesses (SMB) and departmental users reduce the complexity of application development by pre-integrating the most common services for building mainstream Java applications.

In addition to the new services, IBM today also announced that it has contributed some of its Gluecode software to the ASF Geronimo project. Called the Gluecode Management Console, the software provides a user interface that gives users a centralized location to manage, monitor, and configure components of the Geronimo server, making it easier to use.

Chris is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.

The plug-ins support WebSphere Studio Site Developer, WebSphere Studio Application Developer and WebSphere Development Studio Client and are available to all customers at no additional charge. Benefits of this integration include increased development, delivery and application management power.

“Aldon’s Lifecycle Manager and Lifecycle Manager for iSeries plug-in architecture is a distinctively different implementation because it provides the full power and functionality of WebSphere Studio that was intended by IBM and is free to all Aldon customers,” said Dan Magid, president and CEO of Aldon. “By implementing a Team Repository approach rather than the Perspectives approach used by other vendors, all of the objects managed through Aldon can be shared by all members of a development team and can be treated as a single unit in any change management operation.”

Magid continues: “Unlike other approaches, Aldon’s use of the Team Repository architecture is the only strategy that supports the full functionality of WebSphere Studio and can also maximize any integrated third-party tool, the Remote Systems Explorer, the Java Package Explorer and any IDE perspective such as Java, C++ and COBOL.”

The Aldon Lifecycle Manager Plug-ins

With the Aldon Lifecycle Manager and Aldon Lifecycle Manager for iSeries plug-ins, developers can take advantage of Aldon enterprise change management functions without leaving the comfort of the WebSphere Studio environment. The plug-ins allow developers to perform functions like check out and check in and promote. Developers can work on code for all enterprise platforms — all from the same user interface. All native WebSphere Studio functions and WebSphere-compliant third-party tools can be directly applied to code and data managed by Aldon Lifecycle Manager and Aldon Lifecycle Manager for iSeries, regardless of programming language (Java, C++, RPG, COBOL, HTML, XML, documents, images, etc.) or destination platform.

The Aldon plug-ins use the standard WebSphere Studio menu options and functions. Developers do not need additional training to understand user interfaces, navigation, views or functionality. And users still have access to all of Aldon’s advanced enterprise change management functions without any additional purchase of software.

While simple for any level of user, Aldon Lifecycle Manager and Aldon Lifecycle Manager for iSeries handles the behind-the-scenes complex operations of safety, security, multiple user coordination and versioning. As each function is performed, Aldon solutions automatically perform the necessary underlying actions.

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