Comments on: Note to IBM and Sun: Why not collaborate on OSS, Get over it?

By: Mark Cathcart

Mark Cathcart — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 02:18:14 +0000

And as much as it might amuse a few people to discover who did what and when, it serves no purpose and won’t get us anywhere “going forward, not back”…

You are right though, we ought to give credit where we are using any software that was made freely available to us, even if its only via a link at the bottom of the page or some such. It’s a small price to pay.

By: stephen ogrady

stephen ogrady — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 21:40:25 +0000

i’m not sure i can unravel *that* one in a Q&A, alas. might be the longest post ever

By: Bill Higgins

Bill Higgins — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 01:32:15 +0000

Well, there is still one unanswered question that you raised: “Why is there so much apparent animosity between Sun and IBM?”. I’m waiting for Stephen to untangle the threads for us in one of his excellent Q&As, just like he did with the Gluecode acquisition!

By: James Governor

James Governor — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 01:24:17 +0000

wow you guys really make open source analysis easy. who’s next for a clarification. Apache indeed…

By: Bill Higgins

Bill Higgins — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 01:10:35 +0000

I think it’s fair to give Dave Johnson credit for creating Roller. It’s also fair to give Sun credit for giving Dave a paycheck to allow him to focus on Roller full-time, just as IBM pays many employees to contribute to various Eclipse and Apache projects, Linux, etc.

Another thing to consider is that Roller is on a path to Apache stewardship. This should result in a situation where Sun folks, IBM folks, and anyone else who wants to can collaborate on enhancing Dave’s creation.

By: James Governor

James Governor — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 23:47:35 +0000

that is a very useful clarification. thanks very much James. I believe my point may still stand…

By: James Snell

James Snell — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 23:40:30 +0000

We’re not forking Roller. An early version of Roller was picked up back in 2003 (before Sun hired Roller’s chief developer) and customized to support integration with a few of our internal systems (such as our common Intranet user ID and password mechanism and employee directory). We’re currently exploring various options for either moving up to the current version of Roller or to some other as-yet undetermined blogging platform.