The Java Developers Journal is currently running the "2003 JDJ Readers' Choice Awards". One of the categories is "Best Java Application Server", and it is causing a lot of fuss. Users are claiming that votes in the poll keep fluctuating, and JBoss fans are saying that their numbers suddenly fell, whilst BEA's mysteriously rose quickly! Is this the J2EE "hanging chad" election equivalent?

- Did BEA get their employees to all vote? Is that wrong? :)
- Did JBoss then email their list asking them to vote... and is that wrong?
- Who got unfairly treated?
- Does it matter?

Alan Williamson, JDJ editor, has posted to his blog a private email sent to him by JBoss founder Marc Fleury. See: Marc Fleury ... JBoss's own worse enemy. Editors Note: Alan a few days later changed the title of his thread to "The Infamous JBoss thread".

Here are some of the facts in the matter, as reported by some TSS members and from comments by people in Alan's blog:

 - JBoss had a comfortable lead for over a week, but on Friday BEA jumped about 300 votes in one day (speculated by some to be a sign of employee voting).

 - JBoss yesterday sent out a blanket email to all of their documentation customers asking them to vote for JBoss, and in the same day JBoss rose by 600 votes.

 - JBoss was up to 2700 votes on the Reader's Choice category. This morning they were back down to 1200 votes.

Is JBoss being unfairly targeted in this "audit"? It is ok for the proprietary vendors to have their employees vote, but not ok for JBoss to ask its users to vote because that is too "competitive"?"

The updated JDJ poll:
http://www.sys-con.com/java/readerschoice2003/liveupdate.cfm?BType=4 .

**Editors Note***:
As of 8:24PM EST today (May 12th), JBoss was leading with 2502 votes, with BEA trailing at 2125. It seems the JDJ editors put the votes back.

***Second Editors Note*** (May 21)
Marc Fleury and Alan Williamson have published a warm and fuzzy makeup letter (from the jdj site):


JDJ and JBoss: Two Influential Bodies in the Industry Today Cement a New Beginning
By Alan Williamson and Marc Fleury

To the Java community,


We, Marc Fleury and Alan Williamson, would like to take this opportunity to put some order into the chaos that has ensued over the last few days regarding the relationship JBoss has with Java Developer's Journal and, in particular, the Readers' Choice Awards.


We wish to make it clear that, despite recent heated and colorful public exchanges, JDJ and JBoss do not hold an adversarial relationship.


With respect to the JDJ Readers' Choice Awards, we are both committed to making sure there is no misrepresentation and the spirit of the awards is carried through. For those that are monitoring the present state of the polls, you may have noticed a sharp decline and subsequent increase in some of the numbers. This was due to the main database server going offline for a number of hours, resulting in the backup server displaying results that were old. No new votes were lost in that period, however. Normal service has been resumed.


The awards are designed to be voted by genuine users, and JDJ does its best to remove all rogue voting, including the mass automated voting that some enterprising developers have been using to skew the figures dramatically.


There have been times where there were misunderstandings in both organizations, certainly. There are a number of e-mails circulating that on hindsight are regrettable, both organizations hold their hand up, guilty as charged. Those e-mails only served to distract attention from the real issues.


Many conspiracy theories are raging regarding this episode and we both have enjoyed reading some of them. We live and work in a very charged and passionate industry and we are proud to be representing you. Those of you that know either of us will know only too well the energy and enthusiasm we both have for the Java language and the future of the Java community.


It is for these reasons we decided the time had come for us to leave the past where it is and look to the future. The way we see it is that JDJ and JBoss are part of a community that is involved in a passionate dialogue about Java and its future. As such, while we cannot always expect to see eye to eye on every issue, we can promise to continue that dialogue with more decorum in the future.


JDJ and JBoss are two communities that comprise far more than the individual voices of Alan Williamson and Marc Fleury. As for ourselves, contrary to popular belief, we are not mortal enemies, nor do we even dislike one another. So there will be no Celebrity Death match, as one forum suggested.


We would like to thank you all for your continued support of both JDJ and JBoss.


marc + alan

JBoss Group is under the assumption that since JBoss is open source, everything they do will be accepted by community.
Mark called Oracle employee's PIGS last year as they voted for 9IAS in JDJ readers choice on their Employers advise. This year JBoss group requested its users to **CHEAT** in JDJ readers choice.

http://javaswamy.blogspot.com/2003_04_06_javaswamy_archive.html#200138189

-- Kumar.

A backup server with stale data? That must have been some pretty stale data with some "really great" synchronization. As far as the blog postings, all of the children incl the jdj editor, should start acting like adults. As far as JDJ, when you are guys going to get off of cold fusion for your website? Why not go all the way and start hosting the whole "Java Developer's Journal" site off of IIS?

Somebody please tell me how you can have 2k worth of votes unsynchronized from a backup server. Somewhere, someone isn't doing there job correctly. JMHO

How about having the server go away just after everyone get's spammed by JBoss telling them to vote for the product... if even a 10th of the people respond and vote for JBoss, you'd see this many votes disappear as the backup server kicked in to take over for the loss of the primary...

Bill Burkee, the godzilla with 7.1 billion downloads says:

"In fact, vote as many times as you have an email address"

Awesome job, Bill (and Marc Flowery). You folks are really shamless and not worth your salt!

You think this is bad. This company, a while back, did a performance test comparing the J2EE Petstore app against a Microsoft built .Net version of Petstore and guess.. uh oops sorry!

On a Java related mailing list I am a member of, Alan says he doesn't know why the vote tally moved around, but it could have been a back up server having kicked in and having stale data on it. I'm sure the story as to why this occurred will come out in a few days.

There is another issue here -- the nominations for the Reader's Choice awards are put forward by the readers. JBoss was not nominated by anyone. It was added to the categories after nominations closed after some whinging about a JDJ anti-Jboss conspiracy. Then, there was this whole affair with more irritating accusations of pro-Bea, anti-JBoss bias.

Frankly, IMO, Marc Fleury and some other personalities at the JBoss Group seems to be JBoss's worst advertisment. Technically a great product otherwise.

regs
scot.

Which is probably why he gets his wife to do the talking :)

What I am trying to understand is why it is wrong for a company to ask their users to vote? Afterall, they would be representative of the so called readers of JDJ. However, having your employees vote, some of which might clean the bathroom vote for your product for best product? According to the White paper that was discussed here, JBoss has like 30 employees, so you know they can't possibly get their employees to vote in order to win. If users like the product they vote, if they don't they don't vote.

What kind of person would post a private email on a public forum? I question Alan Williamsons character as an editor, this seems rather childish and not professional. Its almost like the kid who used to call people names then used to run home to mommy when he got his ass kicked, we all knew that guy. If Mr. Flowery had posted this message on a public mailing list of public forum, it wouldbe a different story, but he sent a private email.

From a high level let's analyze this situation, JBoss is FREE and does not buy advertising from the like of JDJ or they might not sure about this. I can not imagine they spend the kind of money that let's say BEA, IBM, Sun or Oracle do. JDJ does not sell subscriptions, but rather gives their magazine away and uses advertising dollars in order to fund what they do. Do you think part of this attitude of Alan Williamson stems from the fact that if open source continues to gain momentum, his magazine and job are not as stable as they once were? Will JDJ survive without advertsing dollars? Are the articles worth paying for? Would the people on this forum pay for JDJ or would you rather get your information from the serverside interview, onjava, javaworld, etc. I would love to hear some thoughts about this on these points not on the character of Marc or other personalities from JBoss or JDJ.

Do you think you would get this emotion from JBoss people if they were treated for their technical merits like the proprietary companies by the press and the analysts? If for once an article was written by by an analyst that suggested, that technically JBoss can hold its own, or if their was a product revew by JDJ, etc, would these people stop? if not then, I say I hope their product deies and we all move on to talk about something else.

Think about this...

FYI, I could care less about what happens to any of these people Williamson, Flowery, Burke, or any other member of JBoss or JDJ or anyone for that matter.

JDJ should fire Alan for his actions. Instead of looking into the problem he posted an email to his blog offering no reason or excuse for the presented accusations. If your going to hold a vote for best whatever you better make sure you aren't showing stale data if you intend to be showing the vote count in realtime. This just really smells. And we are given no reason for it. Of course conspiracies will continue until this man is fired and explanations are given. Alan is a child I am ashamed that the editor of this mag is such a baby and can't handle a little pressure.

tx

Matt

ive voted twice for jboss and eclipse among others
How many times have you voted Alan?

What's wrong with Alan posting Marc F's email in his blog? It is obvious that Alan takes that very personally. Well, because Marc F's email is attacktive. Alan strikes back in his blog. I think it's appropriate. If he had used JDJ fight back, that's a problem.

>love to hear some thoughts about this on these points not on the character of
>Marc or other personalities from JBoss or JDJ.

well, i don't pay for my JDJ subscription, but my employer does...
however i am pretty satisfied with the magazine, although there could be a bit more technical content.

however i think that if it is really true that the JDJ lost parts of the toll data (!!), then Alan defintely should apologize, even if he dislike Marc. I am really confused about the rude tone in Alan's weblog.

joe

Reading this thread I'm reminded of the poll guidance provided by Slashdot:

"This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane."

Sounds like the right basis for this whole discussion.

It does matter from a marketing point of view. Both BEA and JBoss know this, but unless JDJ can ensure some sort of decent polling statistics (i.e. it was not rigged) then the results should be held in question. It's an alright magazine, but it's more of an advertisement than anything.

There's nothing wrong with BEA getting its employees to vote (although they really should ask their customers to, instead). That's basically what JBoss is doing. They're asking their customers (since it's free open source) to vote, which is a tad more ethical than BEA asking their employees.

Steve

According to Marc there are 2 ways to get JBoss documentation,

1. Become a JBoss customer.
2. MarC has an alternate solution.

If you still like Marc, Good luck.

What was that sourceforge post about?
Couldnt really get the context of it: someone lightly complaining about not being able to fulfill a purchase of documents and then all of a sudden some foul languange..

Am I missing part of the picture or is that the picture (the 4-5 messages seen there)?

No you are not missing any part of it. Marc just wants someone (don't remember the name of that guy) to suck his dick. Marc wants the payment in nature.

I think the actions of Mr. F should get more publicity. I'm a customer and since this is not the first idiotic reply I've seen from him I'm starting to get worried. "Customers Pay" - that part I do understand, the documentation is cheap but this arrogant and idiotic behaviour seen even across the jboss forums is starting to p**s me off.

Any jboss group member here to educate me why it's necessary to insult customers?

I started to ignore the JBoss product because the attitude of this man sucks. Someone with such a behaviour will never successful.

I agree.
I think the only way to save face is to make a public apology, SHOULD these allegations be true regarding the sourceforge-post to mention one thing that is most at the top of my head.

Behaving like a "rock-star" might work if you actually are a rock-star whose primary goal is to make 16 year-old girls who yearn to get slapped around by some badboy wet in their underwear.

But if your aim is to run a legitimate and respected business, things like these will spell the end of it. I can not emphasise it enough: you get the same respect back that you treat others with, and with this kind of behaviour all it can ever be is some garage-shop barely hanging on to survive in the end.

Going around calling everyone you disagree with a "pig" or asking customers to "suck your d***" isnt exactly going to make the customers stand in line to get some of the action (no pun intended).

Yes, customers do pay, but not to get insulted.

...evil is in context! :-)

AFAIK, conversation with public suggestion to perform
some private act was rather simple:

a visitor of jboss public forum (NOT A CUSTOMER!) asked
the same question several times and got frustrated
for getting no help, or, (by his opinion), uncomplete answers.

Somewhere in the middle of this famost exchange, Mark noted
something like "jboss people do their best, but not oblige
answering...". BJ suggestion was surfaced after several posts,
but only after insults quickly escalated from BOTH sides.

During Mark's presentation and brief personal
conversation, I found him to be polite and man of
interesting ideas...

Alex V.

P.S. I just wonder, what kind of responce you can get from,
say, IBM, or BEA, if you ask them to answer some question
10 times (free of charge)

Mark Flowery says that he wants FREE LOVE and he comes from the USA,

therefore he is EVIL,

actually, MarC Fluery is from France (but lives in the USA), and he was offering to provide documentation ($10 value) in exchange for love.

> say, IBM, or BEA, if you ask them to answer some question
> 10 times (free of charge)

"Sir, you are not entitled to that level of support without the purchase of optional support package X. You can contact your customer representative a XXX or YYY."

A long way from, "blow me".

Yes, yes, the format is very polite.
(as it must be, of course!)

My point is: the result is the same ! :-)))
Customer must pay or FAQ-off :-))

AlexV.

There are 3 ANT books in leading group!
Bravo!!!

Alex V.

There aren't a lot of Marcs in this world. It takes someone with an incredible charisma and blind enthusiasm to convince people to donate their time, energy and other resources to build something. Marc is a brilliant entrepreneur in that manner, and he should be respected for what he has been a part of accomplishing.

Regarding his behavior, when a company, an individual, or even an open source project is very young, it can be forgiven these little slips of the hot-blooded tongue. The problem with Marc is that JBoss has long since passed the point at which he needs to stop being a divisive maniac, and start being a real leader with a compelling, inclusive vision.

I personally lost all interest in supporting the efforts of the JBoss group when Marc started abusing contributors in his online posts. I don't begrudge Marc the right to abuse his competitors, or even to be annoyed with users, but IMHO to abuse people who are contributing time and resources to the JBoss project is beneath contempt.

As long as Marc is associated with this kind of behavior, and as long as JBoss is associated with Marc, it will be a perpetual problem for the serious adoption of JBoss and the acceptance of the JBoss Group LLC (or whatever it's called). OTOH, Marc is still young and bright and could easily acknowledge and fix those bad habits and have a brilliant future. I'm cautiously hoping for that, because otherwise it's a huge waste of talent, and a blemish on the industry.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Easily share live data across a cluster!

I agree with Cameron on a lot of this, and will go a step farther.

It is common in successful startups (and even though this is open-source, it is the same mentality) for people to do what Cameron said. They have some really good idea's and a lot of mental strength, force, whatever to get the job done.

The problem arises when the company starts to grow and get some recognition, business, etc. The founders are confirmed in their methodologies by their early success. What I mean is, their early success in getting the product/company up to a successfull point makes them feel that those are the right things to do continuously to grow their company's product, sales, respect. Unfortunately, the things they did to succeed early on are almost *never* the things they need to do or be able to do as they grow and continue to succeed.

This is when smart entrepreneurs hire professional managers to help them manage this growth, and put on a good public face. The stubborn entrepreneurs often don't give up the reigns and let someone else takeover. They often (although certainly not always) go out of business becuase of this.

I'm sure that some of you will point to Michael Dell and others, but Dell is such an exception to this is to warrant a case study (or many) on the subject.

I don't see Marc F. stepping aside, as there seems to be some ego involved.

I've worked for a number of different startup companies, and I've seen this happen often enough.

Jason McKerr
Northwest Alliance for Computational Science and Engineering

Some time ago I did buy the documentation for 3.0. Today I would not even consider JBoss and will not get my support in any circumstance. I'd rather go with the low cost JRun.

To say that his technical skills might somehow excuse his behavior is just not acceptable. MF is an arrogant, offending person. History is full of people whose brilliance did not stop their badly wired character with sad consequences.

He might not be a machiavelic presence in the industry but he sure earned my disgust.

I would not use his product in the same manner I won't buy from a thief. If I met him I'd derride him rather then praise him for his extraordinary achievements. He's got to be a man before he starts coding.

Boy, if people start boycotting products because of an offensive/arrogant leader, Oracle better watch out ;-)

Ryan

Ryan,

That is exactly the analogy that this whole thing has conjured for me. Don't they remind you of each other? They both have that foot-in-the-mouth arrogance that, seemingly, works for them in a strange sort of way. Ellison was quite a programmer, back in the day, too.

They both create material that provides such entertaining reading from their direct comments and from all of their groupies that feel compelled to bash them or defend them. I think it may all be a brilliant marketing strategy that mere mortals can't understand.

Bill

I could not case less about MF personality. I care more about what people do, -not mere talk.

What disgust me is the way he transforms (by small steps) the OSS project into a commercial company, controlled by him and his family.

From now on, all Open Source contributors have to "watch their backs". A major paradigm shift.

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

So Rolf, what do you do?

>
> What disgust me is the way he transforms (by small steps) the OSS project into a commercial company, controlled by him and his family.

The project is still open, the developers just are trying to make a living by providing some value added services to JBoss.
Microsoft is controlled by Bill and his family, where's the problem?

>
> From now on, all Open Source contributors have to "watch their backs". A major paradigm shift.

So Rolf, what open source project are you contributing too?
>
> Regards
> Rolf Tollerud

-Pete

obviously, you're so into MarcF's bluster that you don't seem to be amenable to reason! Maybe you like being cursed at or insulted by MarcF, the rest of us don't! The analogy to Ellison just doesn't make sense ... I don't think anyone of us here ever saw a mail from Larry to Oracle users asking them to "suck my d***" --- unlike the illustrious Marc Flowery!

Sayanora JBoss!

Sorry Carl, but I can separate the man from the project. Just because I wouldn't invite Marc to dinner (actually I would, he is an interesting person to listen too), does not mean he and the JBoss Group does not provide a valuable service.

-Pete

PS If you want some more interesting comments from Marc, read the source code. ;-)


> obviously, you're so into MarcF's bluster that you don't seem to be amenable to reason! Maybe you like being cursed at or insulted by MarcF, the rest of us don't! The analogy to Ellison just doesn't make sense ... I don't think anyone of us here ever saw a mail from Larry to Oracle users asking them to "suck my d***" --- unlike the illustrious Marc Flowery!
>
> Sayanora JBoss!

Microsoft is controlled by Bill and his family, where's the problem?

Bill and his family have never stated the MS is an Open Source project, as far as I know. Or?

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

I'm surprised that the jboss folks make such a big deal out of JDJ when they initially dismissed it as a farce. But then I shouldn't be, considering that they're the biggest hyprocrites I've seen! The rules clearly state that somebody has to nominate an entry to be considered in the JDJ polls, and obviously none of the 7.2 billion people who downloaded it thought it was good enough to be nominated ... so guess who ended up nominating JBoss?

***************
JBoss Group, LLC
Nominated By: Ben Sabrin
http://www.jboss.org
******************

that's right, they nominated themselves!!!!

Come on Cary..... don't be an ass. Poke around, do some googling, consult someone smarter than you are. Most of the submissions were made by the companies themselves.

Evidently, you are so taken in by MarcF that you can't seem to see the reality (oops, I forget ... you quite enjoy the mistreatment by marcf "suck my d***" kinda stuff, don't you) ;-)

Cary;
Whether or not I am taken with MarcF, whether or not I enjoy the mistreatment and whether or not I can see reality, it is quite clear that you have your head up your ass. Please extract and look around. You do not even have to go that far.

Once again:

1. Extract
2. Look around
3. See that you're wrong.

Cheers.

With the risk of getting a "noisy"-mark on this (probably just mentioning it will make someone click it): I think this discussion woke someone up to try to feed of the scraps of this discussion and score some cheap m$ points, wont mention any names....

But to get back to the real ORIGINAL issue of this thread, I dont really understand what the big fuss is about, everyone know that web-polls shouldnt be taken seriously, and someone winning or not winning one wont influence me at least. In my opinion, these kind of informal poll-awards are basically "Mickey Mouse-awards". And I dont mean that to be offensive to JDJ, I actually like the magazine, I just dont care much for awards based web-polls.

Hell, in Sweden where I come from Swedens largest tabloid/evening paper held a poll and awards for the "band of the millenium" just before the millenium-switch, the results?
1. the Beatles (not to uncalled for perhaps, depending on who you ask)
2. the A-teens (teen-pop band, most known for singing playback poorly to old Abba hits..)
I think Abba came in fifth or something, maybe not a choice for the top for all people, but should reasonably come a couple of hundred positions above a teen-pop band that sings playback poorly to their old hits....

So in short: all web-polls are farces!

For all you Rolf fans out there:

Rolf's contribution to
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2838786,00.html
is .NET ready to go anywhere?

When shall this bashing of Microsoft end? All my experience has been that Microsoft software is superior. The VJ++ and the MS JVM blowed away all competition, and the .NET? Programmers Paradise! I am constantly amazed to why Open source un-American movement gain so much space..I think you should read some stuff at www.softpanorama.org.
The open source people can only make software by stealing.

Based on quick internet search Rolf's email address seems to be rolf dot tollerud at telia dot com

Telia is a swedish carrier & ISP which has merged with Sonera (a Finnish ISP & carrier)

Telia.com & Teliasonera.com
runs on Netscape-Enterprise/4.0 on Solaris

www.sonera.com
runs on IBM_HTTP_Server/1.3.12.6 Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) on Solaris

BTW: Almost all of the pages I browsed where .jsp or .do (struts framework)

Maybe they'll switch to the .NET later?

I doubt that Rolf really works for the Swedish carrier Telia despite what his email might suggest.
Telia is also Swedens largest ISP (both dial-up and broadband), so my guess is that he is merely using his private e-mail..

Forgot to comment this:
Rolf: "The open source people can only make software by stealing"

How come I´ve seen his posts on some MySQL forums begging for some functions if open source is so evil?
Its just something I find a bit amusing..

Oh, and before you start flaming me Rolf: I am not religously involved in any Open source vs Microsoft war.

I am a pragmatic and believe that there is a place in the market for both open source and proprietary software. This also goes for different development environments, languages, frameworks etc. Healthy competition is good for innovation..

It's possible that Marc comes across as brash and in-your-face very often. But I do not think that that should reflect on the quality of JBoss as an open source project or its value to the Java community.

<ramble>
There are many kinds of open source projects.

There are the kind that are constantly playing catch-up to commercial products that represent billions of dollars worth of cutting-edge research, and base their very success on the ability to penetrate and capture market share from those products. (no offense intended, I swear by some of those projects myself.)

And then there are the ones that lead the way in their respective spheres, opening up new territory, and in an world of dog-eat-dog commercialism, manage to survive and emerge as leaders. It's a pretty tough deal for them - there's a dearth of Mont Blanc pens willing to sign six-figure research checks for an open source project. They can try to be innovative, and come up with novel ways to keep those projects alive, and to sustain their momentum and maintain their leadership positions. And yet, they often constantly receive derisive reviews from folks with steady paychecks and regular jobs, who wouldn't blink twice before downloading the latest binaries from the project's website and using it for their own needs, and think it's pretty chic to play the role of (omigoshiamwoundedandbleeding!) the victimised community member. Or more interestingly, never have used the software, and maintain that same position! And why - oh you know, the guy in charge is arrogant and evil and he eats broken bottles and performs human sacrifices when nobody is watching and..
</ramble>

In any case, I won't comment as to which category "I" think JBoss fits into. I'll let you decide.

Sandeep

It, however, must be said that Marc needs to tone down his, ahem, personality. It's never too late, y'know.

> It's possible that Marc comes across as brash and in-your-face very often. But I do not think that that should reflect on the quality of JBoss as an open source project or its value to the Java community.

<snip>
To say that his technical skills might somehow excuse his behavior is just not acceptable. MF is an arrogant, offending person.
</snip>

I dont think Cameron said that. MFs biggest contribution might not be his technical abilities, but his charisma that got many smart people to contribute their time and energy into a project and get it this far. The world definitely needs such people who can make things happen. But again, as Cameron said, I sincierely hope that MF soon gets a PR face-lift.

Cheers,
Binil

I'm coming in late to this thread, but I'd like to add my $0.02:

I used (and helped develop, in a small way) JBoss quite some time ago now (three years?). I have followed it in a general way since then, and have to say that it is developed by a group of very talented people who have put out the best product I have seen in ages. Back when I was working with JBoss and BEA, JBoss absolutely kicked BEA into the street. I suspect it still does.

However... Marc Fleury has an *extremely* abrasive personality, and there are a lot of people who will testify to this. This does not make it bad for him to be on the project, it just means he should *not* be the PR front for JBoss, and should think for a few minutes before he clicks 'send'. I seem to remember a lot of airtime on the jboss mailing lists devoted to smoothing over Marc's flame-wars with various people. The invitation to... erm... know him more personally... quoted above is fairly typical of how I remember things.

I think that Marc making his wife the PR front for the JBoss group is a good start. Blacklisting him on the non-development jboss lists might be a good next step. Marc realising his personality is not perfect and learning to relate to people would be a good final outcome.

This whole thread probably comes fairly close to defamation, so I'll also give some legal advise: Marc will have to prove that his reputation has been significantly degraded *in my country* before he sues me here. That probably gives away where I am from...

I have to agree with Cameron and Jason: it is quite a classic case, some people are good starters, others are needed to manage it once it comes into the next phase. Its just a matter of having different personality qualities: very few are enthusiastic and creative starters while at the same time being administrators with the ability to delegate and keep enthusiasm at a moderate level.
And I can say one thing: ego has never made anyone successful or even happy for that matter.
Having been involved in a couple of startups as an initiator (having both failed miserably and succeeded), I for one prefer to take the backseat and watch the cash tumble in when the time comes rather than captain the venture driving of the cliff..

"And so in military -
Knowing the other and knowing oneself,
in one hundred battles no danger.
Not knowing the other and knowing oneself,
one victory for one loss.
Not knowing the other and not knowing oneself,
in every battle certain defeat."
- Sun Tzu

If that truly is the picture there is nothing there justifying such disrespect and language (I have a hard time seeing any other instance where it would be justified).
There is a customer/potential customer who has a problem that HE feels he has experienced, you dont have to agree, but that is not a reason to get rude.

Besides the obvious "do what my wife wont do"-comment I think the attituted "customers pay" in response that people deserve respect says it all: I wouldnt be in business with people with that kind of attitude for anything, they cant be trusted to be commited to fulfilling their customer engagements once they've been paid.

There are probably at least one of three things at work here (or perhaps all 3):
1. hubris and dilussions of grandness.
2. Mental illness and instability.
3. Just being a social-misfit and total a**.

If this is the respect people deserve in Marc Fleurys opinion he will most likely get the same respect back in the end, things like these will spread like wildfire on the net these days.

I am an active JBoss user and have been for some while, I have also recommended it for both development and production use to a number of organizations and would continue to influence different organizations in that direction as a contractor if everything was allright.

However, if this post on sourceforge is validated as true, I´m off using and recommending it.
I wont jump the gun just yet, as these things can sometimes be fake (changing the visible sender e-mail anyone?), but if it is true I wont hesitate to take action, or should I say stop taking action. It is my and others right to stop supporting a product because of bad behaviour. To make an example: there are quite a few taxi-services that wont get any calls from me because they have been late on a number of ocassions.

I would hate to see a perfectly good product be hampered by an unstable individual, but if you cant trust the people behind a product and the main influences on it, you cant trust the product.

I would like to re-iterate that I like JBoss as a product, but disrespectful behaviour like that just p***es me of bigtime!
I really do hope its just a hoax, but I am skeptic, as it does show a pattern with earlier behaviour and statements.

"If this is the respect people deserve in Marc Fleurys opinion he will most likely get the same respect back in the end, things like these will spread like wildfire on the net these days. "

In an interview on theserverside.com, he mentions that he never leaves the house - he's got a nice red carpet and an xDSL connection; that's all he needs, he claims. Well, the color red is known to produce anger and sexual excitementm, so if he's watching that carpet all day long, geez...

Yup ... the post from Marc "suck my d***" Flowery s authentic. I am sure many others can vouch for this as well. To me, this smacks of arrogance and stupidity. And one of the reasons we stopped using JBoss is that we couldn't put up with MarcF's constant insults. As a result, I find all of his subsequent posts "blue", "red", whatever entirely selfserving. IMO, JBoss would be better off without this clown.

It seems that Marc Fleury is winning the battle on technology but losing the war with his hostility. Marc needs to step back as the PR man and put in a new evangilist to spread the love. Bad mojo will lose the hearts and minds of clients and developers. When I think of JBoss I think of this frustrated guy trying to make a buck. I use it but have no love for it. His attitude makes me think something is wrong with the product and he's going to change the license out of spite. People would vote for JBoss even if they didn't use it if they saw it and Marc as winners.

Marc Fleury cannot single-handedly change the license out of spite. Where do you people get these fantasies from?? Is it really that hard to go to www.fsf.org and read the LGPL license. Should be pretty clear by now after all these years.

The "open your mouth and remove all doubt" clause applies here as well.

/T

>
No it doesnt. its sux.

Why dont they spend their time in improving their own application server?

I have not yet read the JBoss license regarding the source code....is it possible for a few of us just to start JBoss over again minus the arrogance? Maybe call it: ezJ2EE or P.M. App Server (Poor man's) or whatever. Then rewrite the documentation, charge $5 a pop to cover the cost of a tech writer and answer tech questions for $1 a piece to cover the bandwidth on the website......basically make an open source web app without ANY real business model. Is this possible or am I just smoking both ends of the crack pipe?

Regards,
Tom

I guess any thread *remotely* connected to JBoss is sure to fire up an all-out bitch session. I checked out Alan's blog and here are my thoughts...

- Marc Fleury sent a private email to Alan complaining about JBoss's number dropping. Several people thought Marc's tone was whining and paranoid. Big deal. Marc is constantly pissing some people off - what's new? Marc will always be Marc. I'm just stunned people haven't figured this out yet.

- Alan posted this email on his site. I don't agree with this, but at the same time I am not terribly offended by this either.

- JBoss sent out an email asking JBoss users to vote. So what! Companies do this all the time. I don't see it as "pandering" at all.

- JBoss was originally left off the JDJ App Server voting list because they weren't nominated in time. Come on! JBoss is easily one of the most well know app servers out there (I haven't even heard of some of server on the JDJ list). It's stupid not to have them on this list.

- Some have suggested that JBoss's number were the only ones affected stanglely (going way up, then down, then back up again). Don't know if this true. If it is (which would be hard to prove) then it certainly adds to the suspicion.

- Finally, *who cares* about any of this. The JDJ awards are ridiculous...

  * Best Java Persistence Architecture: no Hibernate, no Cayenne, no OJB, no Castor.

  * Best Java IDE Environment: Advantage Plex/Advantage Joe (huh?) ahead of Oracle Developer, NetBeans *and* IBM WS Studio

  * Best Java Class Library: no Jakarta Commons stuff

  * Best Java Profiling / Testing Tool: contains Oracle JDeveloper (IDE?) and ArgoUML (Modeling?) but no JUnit, Cactus or MockObjects?

Considering how out-of-whack this voting list is, I'm suprised there is such a fuss on *both* sides.

Ryan

Great post, Ryan. I agree completely. (I know Trader Joe, but not Advantage Joe)

What's up folks? The truth is hard to bear? :-)

why bother answering a bunch of idiots trolling?

> * Best Java Persistence Architecture: no Hibernate, no Cayenne, no OJB, no Castor.
>
> * Best Java IDE Environment: Advantage Plex/Advantage Joe (huh?) ahead of Oracle Developer, NetBeans *and* IBM WS Studio
>
> * Best Java Class Library: no Jakarta Commons stuff


*Readers* nominate. If it's not nominated it's not on the awards list. I think that's a flaw, especially with the categories thing (people not nominating things in consistent categories) but that's the rules. Unless you're JBoss and then, the rules are bent for you (nominated after nominations closed).

This is why I am hesitant to fully adopt JBoss. Instead of finding usefull information about JBoss in different forums and such, I run into quite a bit of bickering over whatever related to JBoss. Marc Fleury's comments like accusing people of taking part an anti-JBoss conspiracy and other rude comments. IMHO it seems like Marc Fleury wants it both ways - the benefits of open source, to JBoss free and increase its usage, but wants to make money at the same time by charging for anything but the most basic documentation.

JBoss is a great product and I would recommend it to anyone. I plunked down the $60 for the documentation. It saved me more than $60 in time and headaches. It's a small price to pay. Just like giving to PBS or your NPR station. The JBoss developers have done a great job and Marc is just one of them. The technology is great but the message is all wrong. I bet BEA and IBM are enjoying the spin on this.

I think most want JBoss to be a great product and take pride in using it and supporting it. So what's the solution. Marc is part of the product and he needs to win back some goodwill. Messageboards need to be addressed. Give away some upcoming documentation perhaps. Suck it up and cut an article for the JDJ. Evangelize. Win hearts not minds.

Correction: BERT IS EVIL

I don't see what the hell the problem is with developers who are basically working on JBoss full time trying to make a living. How many of us (except for full time students) work for free? We, as a community, get a FREE tool, the JBoss developers get to make a living. Seems like a win-win to me.
  Not using JBoss because Marc Fleury can be abrasive makes the same amount of sense as not using Oracle because you don't like Larry Ellison.
  If you don't like JBoss, don't use it. If you don't like the basic docs and think paying for extended docs is awful then use your free time to write your own docs and release them back to the world.
  Geez, developers have to be the biggest bunch of whiners. They want everything to be free and perfect but don't work for free or produce perfect software.

-Pete

Well, Larry says some pretty ridiculous, offensive stuff about the competition. I think it's a rare thing to see someone take that same attitude towards customers, or even potential customers. And if what I hear about his abuse of contributors is true, then he's really beyond the pale. I can't stand people who are abusive to their employees because it makes them think they're "results guys". What a load. All it means is that they're a-holes. But again, this JBoss guy is different. He's abusing people who are donating their own free time and effort. So evidently he's a big fan of mixing your general a-holish manager attributes with blatant stupidity, so you end up alienating both people who work for you for free and people who might want to pay you. Clever.

I agree.

I don't think many people on this thread have experience of working on OSS projects. I agree that MF seems to be on an ego trip - something that could be said for other OSS stars too. This is my own opinion I formed right from the start of the JBoss project. Big deal.

But OSS users would suck the flesh of your body if you let them. They are a whiny, demanding lot who have obviously only ever supped on the infintite teat of support lines paid for by their companies. Even with the small OS projects I've created I get loads of whingey mails basically asking me to sort out someone's entire project.

Running an OS project is hard, you do it for little reward, at least compared to all those poneytailed meejah types who made out like bandits during the dot Com era. You get slagged off, you get dumbass users who can't be bothered to THINK. It is hard, no wonder MF, who is more geek than business man, snaps now and again.

And on top of all that, unlike say Jobs at Apple. Because there is no money in it, there is no emenence grise waiting to take over and give your startup the nice polished front of a respectable company. There are no teams of PR bunnies running around talking to dumbass clients. It is the same old geeks who started the project who have to do website design, marketing, PR, all the detrius jobs that go with a product and they still have to code.

David

BTW my latest OSS product is x.Link on sourceforge, a Java performance profiler and if anyone is looking for a great Java VM to play with check out my friend Rob's JamVM, also on sourceforge. Rob is one of the best VM engineers out there.

To Alex V and David Off:
I can tell you with that kind of an attitude you wont have any success or even make a dime in business, if you cant be polite and helpful to customers and potential customers, no matter how enerving, "stupid" or whatever they are, you shouldnt be in a position where you ever run the risk of meeting or interacting with a customer.
Reading those kind of posts get me to think of one of those classic things read on a CV: "Should not work with people".

A bad attitude will make your customers runaway, and you want them to come back time after time, thats were the money is.
Do you want to make $100 ONE time on a marketting effort of $500, or do you want to have reocurring transactions of 10x$100 with the same customer for the same effort (ok, you have to be a little polite as well, if thats an effort)?

Wille Faler,

In no point in time I will agree with un-politeness
as way to comminicate. But what about facts?

1. Several people notes jumping numbers. What is you
take on JDJ explanations?

2. Will you communicate, let say for example,
some negative review to a JDJ editor after
he exposed a privat email this way?

Alex V.

Ah... S.O.S, Mamma-mia...

Alex V.

In response to your questions Alex V:

>Several people notes jumping numbers. What is you
>take on JDJ explanations?
To be honest, I dont even recall their explanations anymore, but my personal opinion is that web-polls shouldnt be trusted, and in this case with numbers jumping, I wouldnt trust the results or the explanations, either they are making up excuses to cover for manipulation or they simply dont have any control over what they are doing, which is worse I leave for others to run the rule on.

>Will you communicate, let say for example,
>some negative review to a JDJ editor after
>he exposed a privat email this way?
I might be a cynic, but do not trust a journalist to keep private conversations private, they are in the business divulging information that is "news-worthy" in their opinion which means that nothing is sacred.
On a personal note, I would surely be dissapointed, but I think given what I just said, you should phrase yourself in an objective an non-aggressive way with good arguments for your cause so your response cannot be used "against you".

My main point throughout my posts have been that you shouldnt let your heart rule over your mind in these matters.
Although I have to admit that at the beginning of the side-discussion regarding the sourceforge-posts I was so appaled and shocked at the behaviour that I might have let my feelings towards this kind of behaviour talk rather than my mind.

"Therefore, one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the most skillful.
Subduing the others military without battle is the most skillful"
- Sun Tzu

Ok, I admit, I am partial to military philosophers, especially Sun Tzu. But their words are most applicable to almost any line of work and life.

This is one of the more intelligent posts I have read.

Those of you who have been personally insulted by Marc should go form a club where you can bitch about him offline. For those of you who have never even dealt with him, you need to get a life and go back to work or reading the National Enquirer or whatever it is you do.

Most you guys are a bunch of arm chair quarterbacks who've been to too many political correctness sensitivity trainings. "If I was running JBoss, I would...or I know someone who knows someone who says Marc is a jerk...or you are getting all hot and bothered about that same old post that keeps getting dredged up on TSS every few months or so." It's like uh, I went looking for porn and got offended by it. You want to be offended. You are enjoying being offended because for two seconds it enables you to enjoy a feeling of smug, self-satisfied superiority. In your obvious delectation over this issue, you are as guilty and complicit as he is.

No one who's seen Marc's posts on the JBoss forums will deny that he can be abrasive and rude (although the impression given here is that that is all he is, see http://www.freeroller.net/page/fx/20030514). Charismatic people, who work under stressful conditions are often controversial and tend to be bad at politics and protocol. My favorite is George C. Scott's performance as Patton. I don't think being a JBoss developer is for everybody and I don't think they want everybody. For a group to function successfully under stressful conditions, it needs its own self-selecting ethos. So I wouldn't expect it to be a warm nurturing environment. It sounds more like a bunch of guys who are on a mission, who are out there to kick ass, the rest be damned.

That being said, as the project gets bigger and they try to build a professional company around it, I would expect their PR to get smoother. Sure, Microsoft is know for looking "professional." The difference is most of you don't have access to Steve Ballmer. You'd never be in contact with him to be insulted even if you wanted to. And, even with the army of handlers they have, there are still those rare glimpses when you get to see the primate hopping up and down on the stage.

Hey people? Forgot why we are here?

Unless you are a student learning Java/J2EE, or an amature home programmer, or working for a start-up with an uncertain future - why would you care about JBoss?

Anyone out there - please speak up if you work for a bank, or stock exchange, or major financial company, or an airline, or major manufacturing, or.... (I guess we call those Fortune *X*00 ?),
and your employer is using JBoss in production to run their core business.

Forget about mom-and-pop shops, or porno sites - who cares?

Have you seen any job ads saying "Looking for a JBoss developer/administrator to build/run our next mission critical high volume XYZ application"?

Oh, sorry, you are in this for fun? For the beauty of programming? Than what are you doing HERE? You should be developing games, or 3-d graphics, or AI software.

Here, we are talking about ENTERPRISE APPLICATION INFRASTRUCTURE. JBoss has no place here.

My 0.02

You are out of touch and not qualified to state any of that. Uh.... wait, let me say it another way. You do not know what the hell you are talking about. There is a lot going on there that you are obviously not aware of, and a tiny bit of research would reveal that there are financial companies and airlines and stock exchanges using JBoss, so I cannot take your opinion or posting seriously.

and your employer is using JBoss in production to run their core business.


If you go to the UK jobsite www.jobserve.com you will find around 40 jobs needing JBoss skills. In France, where I work, I've come across a lot of big companies using JBoss, I can't tell you who many are as it is NDAd, but France Telecom (who also sponsor Jonas) and Wanadoo Professional use it. I have a friend working for Cegetel (part of Vivendi) who are using it as their main application server. Websphere and BEA are still the biggies in the commercial world but with current budgets OSS looks very attractive.

Thanks for your replies, but I still stand by my statement: JBoss is not used by enterprises as a rule to run their core business. And, I do know what I am talking about.

I specifically stated: for their core business. I understand that there is some use of JBoss, otherwise it would be out of business by now. Even some big names may be using it, mostly in-house, for some small apps.

But:

These are not the core mission-critical high transaction volume applications securing those companies' revenue stream (with a few possible exceptions);

And, why are we not seeing any public references or news releases from those customers? Are they afraid to admit they are running JBoss? I'd assume JBoss wouldn't suffer from any GOOD PR (as opposed to the one MF is creating :-))

The job sites postings do exist, but again: in what context?

In any case, I do realize it's not black and white. However, at least one public reference wouldn't hurt...

df

> And, I do know what I am talking about.

I do know for a fact that it is used by enterprises to run their core business (it is not even that difficult to find out which). Therefore I conclude you don't have a clue about what you're talking about.

This is not small apps usage, this is the CORE usage on some multi-million dollar hardware. Enterprises don't run their small in house apps on these boxes.

> These are not the core mission-critical high transaction volume applications
> securing those companies' revenue stream

Uh-huh, you sure know it all, don't you?

> And, why are we not seeing any public references or news releases from
> those customers? Are they afraid to admit they are running JBoss?
> I'd assume JBoss wouldn't suffer from any GOOD PR (as opposed to the
> one MF is creating :-))

"That first application tracks order status in a variety of legacy systems,
 handling as many as 75,000 transactions per hour, says Miller. Reliability
 and speed were essential considerations. "We got a lot of benefits from
 taking our time—for instance, the EJB 2.0 spec matured a lot," he says.
 JBoss improved too and added such enterprise-friendly features as support
 for clustered servers. Corporate Express, a $5 billion company, now has
 six EJB applications in production, all running on JBoss.
"

http://www.cio.com/archive/041503/et_article.html

/T

We (myself and a few colleagues) have deployed enterprise applications to production on jboss in some of the largest energy & commodities trading companies in the US (cannot give names on a public forum but will be happy to do so via personal email). Of course, some of this was due to depressing fiscal situation which obviated BEA licenses.

As to MF's enigmatic behavior... It is totally unacceptable and he should consider an immediate PR "face lift". I consider his antics a weakness and it will ultimatley affect the success of the jboss group (we'll hope that it doesn't affect the jboss technology).

as was pointed out, it seems that in the open source world you need to be tougher than anyone else.

Most people are there to exploit your work for free (apple comes to mind) and others to kill you (microsoft comes to mind) and most developers are jealous of the freedom developers enjoy.

It is a tough world and the image emanating from the suck my dick comments are more sexy than anything... I wish I was able to say that, how many of you really wished they could say that to their customers and users. I find it funny frankly.

ABC, I find it offensive!

See the JDJ Web page for a joint statement from Alan Williamson and Marc Fleury on this whole issue, should put the controversy to a well-deserved rest.
"We wish to make it clear that, despite recent heated and colorful public exchanges, JDJ and JBoss do not hold an adversarial relationship, " it says in part. "JDJ and JBoss are part of a community that is involved in a passionate dialogue about Java and its future. As such, while we cannot always expect to see eye to eye on every issue, we can promise to continue that dialogue with more decorum in the future."

This thread can be summed up as a bunch "My SHIT don't stink" jealous ramblings.

tx

Matt

ps
My shit stinks!