Sun has announced that they are going to give $3 million to fund open source initiatives for implementing standards that come out of the JCP. Under the new scholarship program, non-profit groups, universities and qualified individuals can apply for scholarships to help defray the costs of Sun's technical support services while undergoing the Java compatibility tests.

This seems to be an interesting reversal, since last week McNealy was saying how he felt open source was
hurting J2EE.

Maybe this is a chance for JBoss to get certified?

Here's the CNET article

Sun has previously stated that JBoss would not be eligble for any of the scholarship money because even though the JBoss Application Server is open source, the silly JBoss Group is attempting to make money off of it thru services and such.

[Insert Step 3. Profit joke here]

>>it thru services and such.

Lucky for us. Otherwise JBoss would never have been built

<quote>
Lucky for us. Otherwise JBoss would never have been built
</quote>

I am not critizing the JBoss Group, it was actually meant as a joke. I vaguely remember when Sun started talking about this scholarship thing months ago they explicitly mentioned something about JBoss not being eligble.

I also remember Mark Fleury saying at some point in time that the JBoss actually had the money to pay for the compatibility test themselves. I really wish they would get certified because it is still a hard sell for some companies that feel need to pay 10K per CPU for their App Server.

Scenario:
"JBoss goes through the compatibility tests and is J2EE-certified."

JBoss...
... is free (except for the docs)
... has a huge developer base
... is then (after the cert) easier to "sell to your boss"
... is not too slow
... sources are available
... implements the latest technologies
... development will then (after the cert) be sped up even more (just an assumption)

Result:
A big gain of marketshare in mission-critical deployments (where BEA and IBM now are).

Questions:
1. Can't it be that BEA and IBM pressured SUN not to include JBoss in the scholarship?
2. Wouldn't the JBoss-J2EE-certification be something for BEA and IBM to be scared of?

--Rias

I don't think IBM cares whether JBoss is certified or not. They're very strong on selling services these days, they understand where the market is going.

BEA however, no doubt, is the biggest single reason JBoss hasn't been certified. They're scared. J2EE will be commoditized. What excuse are they going to use to charge $10k to $90k per CPU on deployment?

Watch BEA being bought within next 12 months...

/T

So, if anyone tries to make money using the OpenSource project, they're not eligible?

Ok, so if I get this right only two kinds of OpenSource projects are eligible:
a) Projects used by companies that don't make money (i.e. startups that die)
b) Projects used in academia or individuals in spare time.

Right. And the money was for compatibility tests? How many OpenSource projects that would require compatibility tests do we know of that fulfill both a) and b)?

My guess would be 0.

/Rickard

Actually, the rules says:

"The legal requirements are:

A legally organized not-for-profit (such as a '501 [c][3]' corporation) that is not owned or effectively controlled, based on prevailing standards of law in the applicable jurisdiction, by a commercial interest, that uses the TCK for the purpose of developing and distributing a compatible, non-commercial, independent implementation of a Spec.
An individual not acting for or on behalf of a legally organized entity that uses the TCK for the purpose of developing and distributing a compatible, non-commercial, independent implementation of a Spec.

Non-commercial means an implementation that is not used by the applicant for direct or indirect commercial or strategic gain or advantage." (http://java.sun.com/scholarship/)

It seems like there is no problem if someone else is making money of the open source project, but there can be no commercial interest from the project group itself. I dont know if charging for the documentation counts as commercial interest though...=)

Br - Johan

I suppose the JBoss group would be allowed to apply for these grants with a track record as the best most popular J2EE implementation out there.

Jill.