The latest issue of CIO magazine has a great article about open source tools, with a focus on java. The article discusses types of tools, standardization and commoditization, growing adoption, CIO concerns, etc. According to a recent Evans Data survey, 53 percent of developers use some open-source code, but only 9 percent spend more than half their time using open-source tools.

Read Build it free.

I don't know if the 9 percent statistic carries any real information re: Open Source tools vs. Commercial tools

I doubt if I spend more than half of my time on ANY one tool - my time is spread out during the day among multiple tools Java IDEs, CM, e-mail, XML Spy, meetings etc.

The real question is - is time spent on Open source tools less than
time spent on commercial tools. Even the answer to this has
unclear implications - A lower amount of time on open source tools
could be good (open source tools are more efficient) or bad
(open source tools are not as useful or lack functionality).

Best,

-Frank

In my personal experience, JBoss/Jetty and mySQL present an excellent opportunity to deploy J2EE applications very quickly. I've saved an incredible amount of time and money because of the availability of open source.

In my development environment, the only software I had to license was IntelliJ IDEA (a feasible alternative to this would have been Eclipse, but I'm hooked on IDEA, and believe it's the best java IDE on the market and well worth the 200 bucks I paid for it on Easter Special).

I was able to put together a high-end workstation for 1100 dollars (Intel P4 2.6 gig proc, 512 meg corsair ram, 120 gig HD, geforce 64 meg graphics). The money I saved on MS licensing I dumped into hardware. I'm running linux, mysql, openoffice, jboss/jetty, ant, struts, etc..

The industry's open-source movement is breaking down competitive barriers being constructed by the big app server vendors. Let the games begin.

John C. Dale
CEO, CIO
Down in the Desert, Inc.

Evans normally does the popular "North American Developer Survey" and "The International Developer Survey" twice a year so the next surveys should be due any time now. They are almost surely to contain interesting information not only of Open Source usage but also on the Java .NET situation.

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

So are you saying you generally agree with their findings? What will you say if their report does not favor your position?

"What will you say if their report does not favor your position?"

Why should I not agree with a professional survey with done by a company that enjoy some of the highest respect in the field?

It is only Java people that try to get away with squirming excuses in such positions..

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

>
> Why should I not agree with a professional survey with done by a company that enjoy some of the highest respect in the field?
>
> It is only Java people that try to get away with squirming excuses in such positions..
>
> Regards
> Rolf Tollerud

Do you post inflamatory comments just to see if you can a reaction?

We have saved considerable $$ through wide scale deployments of JBoss,Jetty,Tomcat for our internal departmental applications and as a large systems integration company , we have helped many of our customers worldwide to deploy robust applications with in their very tight budgets and which has also saved them a lot of $$ on their application infrastructure investments and with little or no investment, we have been pretty productive on our projects using Netbeans and Eclipse.Infact ,the opensource software offering has helped us in many cases to win projects with clients who were either skeptical investing in large projects or who had tight budgets.

We have also been able to provide good technical support on opensource platforms and generate additional revenues.

-Rob

A few interesting points:
"'There's more and more acceptance of open-source tools as things like Linux and Apache become more widespread,' says Mark Driver, research director at Gartner."
All respect for anything Gartner ever says has been lost. I didn't realize the Apache was just now catching on and "becoming more widespread". I suppose once it tops 80% of all web servers in existence, it will have "arrived" in gartner's eyes.


"'Now, any Joe Engineer can take the Eclipse product and be pretty productive.'"
...
"JBoss, for instance, lacks the development environments packaged with WebSphere and other application servers. "
Does this guy realize that the "development environment packaged with WebSphere IS eclipse?

> Does this guy realize that the "development environment packaged with WebSphere IS eclipse?

To be fair to them, there's a difference between WSAD and Eclipse. The genius of Eclipse is that's its just a matter of additional, *proprietary* plugins, but there's still a difference.

True enough, but the article made it seem like there was a huge gap between OS IDEs and things like websphere. I actually prefer Eclipse to Websphere because I can always have the current version and it doesn't run as slowly (websphere adds a LOT of plugins that I don't use). Not only that, I don't like the way websphere makes you organize a web project. I prefer the sysdeo tomcat plugin.

I think not pointing out the Eclipse/Websphere connection is especially ignorant on the part of the author because the donation of eclipse to open source shows a significant investment by a major player (IBM) in open source. Regardless of whether or not people use eclipse, its origins show an interesting model of how OS can be profitable. I think that IBM is showing the power of OS here by using the community as a way to enhance their own websphere product offering over time.

I also think that if JBoss users can leverage an IDE that is the core of Websphere's IDE, maybe missing about 25% of features, then how much is JBoss really "lacking", as the article's author puts it? This is one of those cases where the phrasing of a particular statement based on a lack of knowledge can give a totally erroneous impression (in this case, that developers using OS servers are somehow light-years behind those using commercial offerings).

"but there's still a difference."

There is a huge difference from eclipse to the available plugins in WSAD

Eg
Universal Test Client
Web Services wizards (5 minutes to create a web service and deploy)
Test environment
...

I would say one of the reason open source tools are successful because of the excellent initial technical support you get on the issues you might faces. This is possible since you are directly interacting with the masters of trade(developers). Though the liability of the support is not long term or sustainable one, it helps to successfully complete the development stage faster. On the other hand in commercial products the tech support is available from the document trained support teams.


- Binu
Accenture

There's a misleading point made in this otherwise well-researched article:

"JBoss, for instance, lacks the development environments packaged with
WebSphere and other application servers."

With Ant and xDoclet (run inside an IDE or separately), one can generate code,
compile, package and deploy an application to any app server including JBoss,
Weblogic and Websphere. Why does the app server need to have an integrated IDE?

The point of J2EE is to achieve commoditisation of the app server. If each app
server has to bundle its own IDE, that defeats the purpose of a common
standard.

Besides, a script like an Ant build script enables far greater control over the discipline of the development process than a series of mouse-clicks in a "friendly", GUI-based IDE. How can you standardise a process in such an environment and ensure quality compliance by a team of developers? There are definite situations where scripts are far superior to GUIs.

The article makes it look like JBoss is less "complete" than commercial app
servers like Websphere, but that is definitely not the case.

The author should brush up on the latest developments in Open Source Java to be able to judge whether proprietary products are better or worse.

Where standards are concerned, "more" is usually less.

Ganesh

>compile, package and deploy an application to any app server including JBoss,
>Weblogic and Websphere. Why does the app server need to have an integrated IDE?

One answer is that your stuck with simple "code generation" -which has many drawbacks- vs. advanced annotation-controlled framework containers. This is an area where WebLogic with Workshop is definitely more productive, efficient, and maintainable than an exclusively opensource/jboss approach.
Matt

Matt,

For us laymen, can explain what the heck an "advanced annotation-controlled framework container" is and what advantages is provides over "simple code generation".

Ryan