The Spring Application Platform
Almost lost in all of the twittering about Twitter’s twubbles last week (sorry CrazyBob, couldn’t resist that one!), was the unintentionally quiet announcement of the “Spring Application Platform” (more official posts here and here from springsource).
Pros
An interesting post from Per Olesen (j2ee developer) highlighted these positives:
At a first glance, it looked to me as a lot like a server like the JBoss micro kernel architecture, which could (can) be tailored to only run the exact parts of JEE, that your application needs .. At a second glance, this is actually just a minor part … they are also using it (OSGi) as the technology for deployment units for the applications running on it … that is where I see some benefits
Billy Newport (IBM distinguished engineer and driver behind wXS ) thinks this is more or less inevitable:
It looks like what others and I have been planning/hoping to do over the next few years. Most of us are looking for an OGSi based distributed platform with a commercial friendly license (EPL, BSD or Apache)
I see this as the new JVM, a module or bundle oriented runtime that’s also distributed.
I think that probably represents the POV of many java vendors.
Cons
On the other hand, Billy wonders how long the additional work can be licensed (as opposed to being treated as OSS commodity):
Spring DM is Apache licensed, I can see the extra work in the Spring server being clean roomed and made available with EPL or Apache pretty soon and this will remove value from selling the SpringSource server<
Phil Zolo is concerned that this hurts the Spring framework itself:
The Spring Application Platform is the biggest announcement to come out of the Spring team for some time. It also looks like it could be a big mistake. Spring became popular in the first place as a practical, community driven solution to the real problems with Java enterprise applications, with a focus on simplicity. The latest offering seems to be moving in a rather different direction.
Of course, Marc Fleury (of jBoss fame) has some very pointed observations (more here)
Truth is, I care a little bit but not a lot. To me this is a VC driven move … It is the same thing you had yesterday for free, except it is now under the GPL and a proprietary subscription license. I laugh.
Finally I am fuzzy on how this impacts their relationship with other app-servers. They are not neutral anymore.
That’s basically the point (from another perspective) that Billy was making about the license. In any case, after an indirect interchange with Rod Johnson, Marc gets really lit up
Rod is wrong on a couple of things: I DO understand the technology enough to call it out for what it is “an emperor has no clothes” attempt to monetize his ISV base … this is almost 10 years old. What is new is the licensing gimmick … Your users are not dumb, they see right through this flat footed license change, don’t get mad and patronize them when they call you out.
Ouch!
Final Thoughts
Leaving the personal animosity aside that seems to mix into springsource / jboss conversations, a few points are flowing here and elsewhere:
- There’s value here, but it’ll eventually be done in a clean commodity version (for all, including ISVs).
- Legitimate concern that the Spring framework itself will get stale
- This still doesn’t help with operations, nor does it do much for reliability (a post for another day)
It’ll be interesting to see more community reaction at javaone.
Bob
Re your concluding points:
@Bob There’s value here, but it’ll eventually be done in a clean commodity version (for all, including ISVs).
With this product we’re focused on delivering value to end users (for whom GPL is fine), and not ISVs, who include competitors. For example, regarding Billy’s post: if IBM were to be able to incorporate the SpringSource Application Platform’s kernel into WebSphere without paying us, they could compete with us with our own code. How would this be fair when WebSphere is closed source?
As for “eventually done in a clean commodity version”: let’s have that discussion when it happens. We have a lead now. We hope to maintain and extend it. Sure, we’d welcome competition. We’re providing the middleware kernel BMW would build. If IBM or anyone else wants to provide the Ford Crown Victoria in EPL or ASL just because they don’t like our license, that’s fine.
@Bob Legitimate concern that the Spring framework itself will get stale
I don’t see how this concern is legitimate. There is overwhelming evidence that contradicts such pure speculation. Consider the huge number of releases recently in the Spring Portfolio: Spring Framework 2.5, Spring Web Flow 2.0, Spring Security 2.0, Spring Web Services 1.5, Spring Batch 1.0…
The SpringSource Application Platform is a key part of SpringSource’s plan to become a large independent middleware vendor. That is good news for the Spring Portfolio, which SpringSource overwhelmingly resources.
@Bob This still doesn’t help with operations, nor does it do much for reliability (a post for another day)
We already have operational features above Tomcat in this release, but I agree that it was not the main focus of the release.
Rgds
Rod