SpringSource acquired by VMware

[springmvcsucks]

First Sun. Now Spring. I guess it would be like beating a fossilized horse skeleton now when I say "J2ee is dead". Only 10 posts to this announcement. Wow.

[pnats]

I dont really care who owns it I guess. I will be running a DIFF on the lic agreement. This goes for the DOWNLOAD section as well. Rod may think he is running things but not likely.

Anyhow on point why EMC/VMWare? Does not make any sense other than VMware is feeling the heat in the vm'ed world and needs something else to make them different from what is starting to look like a .5 dozen or so quality VM's. Still a slightly fat J2EE software that can be replaced with re-factoring does not make alot of sense for the price tag. Still I am sure the VC had some say in the cash and Rod got a good paycheck. But still Vmware? I am an IT manager/sysadmin/dba of sorts. I just bought 4 fully loaded HP blade cages with VMWare's management software. Pretty cool stuff I have to say. But vmware + spring? common that makes as much sense as socialized health care. (heh could not help myself). No really if I had to repuchase the 50 - 100K I just spent on VMWare I am not sure I would check the "Sping Center" button.. Why would it run Faster? Doubt it since I have 56 server virtualized accross 16 blades in a HA manner. Without issues I am running BEA (which is a pig) , Sql server, Oracle....

Anyhow I dont get it. Does not make a single SALE for VMware in the next 2 years if any.

I will also say now that Larry bought Sun it was looking good to see if they would have bought Spring since that at least make a bit more sense seeing that they own BEA which really needs to be thrown out.... Good preemptive move .... Anyhow I am looking to move to something else if that license file changes even a character....

[adam.fitzgerald]

I am an IT manager/sysadmin/dba of sorts. I just bought 4 fully loaded HP blade cages with VMWare's management software. Pretty cool stuff I have to say.

Glad to hear that you like the VMware management software. I think Steve Herrod's blog post (section: How do VMware and SpringSource intersect?) clearly answers your question: "But vmware + spring?"

However, whether it’s around speed of deployment, application performance guarantees, or providing resiliency in the face of component outages, we will be able to provide even more capabilities as we bring even more knowledge of the application and infrastructure layers together.

If you are using Spring in your applications running on WebLogic, imagine having your applications inform your management center about load problems or give warnings about imminent failure due to misplaced locks or thread thrashing in the application. The management center could automatically provision new instances or restart images to compensate. Perhaps that is not something that you are willing to pay for, but SpringSource and VMware already have joint customers asking for such features.

Good luck with you application development and deployment.

Adam FitzGerald
SpringSource

[garpinc2]

While the hibernate folks barked at us, the Spring folks have been nice.

When we look at where we were and where we are now... Spring

And yes we are a community and so we don't like when another butts in.. But to do what we do cannot be done working for free.. And so at least we can acknowledge that we actually have made some money with the benefits of free software that Spring provided...

So will VMWare put an end to Spring? I can't see why VMware would sink millions of dollars into a company like Spring only to kill what it represents. This is not a competitor to VMWare they want to sweep under the rug.. That would make no sense...

Only thing I want from this merger is for some of the cool things that SpringSource was previously trying to make money with to support the development effort to actually become free :-) Oh and it would also be pretty cool if the new company also bought a jsf component library vendor (icesoft is one that comes to mind). I think it's high time spring had a comprehensive first level JSF component library as part of the Spring suite...

Once again.. Thank u SpringSource
And Congratulations....

[papphammar]

As for alternatives, I think it generally makes sense to know about alternatives when selecting any technology.

Agreed. 'Been too comfortable with Spring for the last 5+ years. Time to take new bearings.

I've spent quite a lot of time looking at Guice in the past to see what it can do for me.

Guice seems very promising. I like the idea of a component focused solely on dependency injection, and to use components from other sources for things like MvC, persistence etc. We'll avoid frameworks and spread the eggs over a number of smaller baskets. Thanks.

[gregturn]

Yes, it sounds good. If it wasn't for the fact that the nature of the deal casts doubt over openness and community support, there would be no need for Spring officials to emphasize this point over and over again. They obviously recognize that our concerns are well-founded and go out of their way to put them to rest.

We shall see. Meanwhile we'll be looking for alternatives.

You know, there is no good way out of this. Either they make the statement that they are committed to openness in the framework and everyone says they are just paying lip service. Or...they don't make the statement and everyone says they are avoiding saying the opposite.

Damned if you do....damned if you don't. Need some insurance? Get yourself a checkout of the code base and lock it up in a vault! Grab it quarterly, and if things suddenly disappear, the ASL license in the code base will see you through a fork job.

BTW, isn't this the same stuff I heard when VC funding arose? Hmm...and they just released Spring Framework 3.0 M4, Grails 1.2 M2, Spring Roo, (and Spring Python 1.1 M1 is coming soon!) ALL free.

[papphammar]

Grab it quarterly, and if things suddenly disappear, the ASL license in the code base will see you through a fork job.

Disappearing? Not what we're concerned about. Do you keep using it even though you think you'd might be stuck with a fork job? Wow.

BTW, isn't this the same stuff I heard when VC funding arose?

Not from us - we thought VC funding was a really positive thing and would have loved to see SS as a successful independent (at least platform independent) player. We just don't like SS being part of one out of a range of deployment platforms for reasons already explained.

[sridhar.rao]

May be vmware is waiting to be acquired by another company....Oracle can buy it

[garpinc2]

Just hope redhat does not get any funny ideas...

[kucerarichard]

Just hope redhat does not get any funny ideas...

You mean like Weld/CDI?

I was looking for an old thread that might help explain the strategic sense of VMWare/Spring... we have an enterprise that is mirroring the same situation, we have technical architects in the data center with a vision of everything on a VM, we have Java/database application programmers who will no longer go near a VM with their java-based database application stuff(java portals and confluence wikis etc), and we have a newly committed Java-based enterprise strategic direction (e.g. less PHP, dotnet and alternatives).

The goals would seem to be contradictory, or rather require a resolution. Was trying to see if VMWare had an answer to the tricky task of running Java/DB stuff on a VM and having it perform reliably and cost effectively(that is there is inhouse admin who can help and VM maintenance and configuration wouldn't demand too much of their time which they have none to keep up with VM building, configuration and testing). Is it the centralized pre-integrated moloch or cloud that we pay VMWare for? If the tricky part is that you inhouse can't hope to support Java/DB on a VM?

Regards,
-R