The Story Behind JBoss's Boss

kosamae writes "Businessweek has an interesting article about Marc Fleury. It's more about the business and personal end of his life than about the technology he's helped to create." From the article: "But while Fleury, like Neo, is something of a cult figure, few people in the old or new software world want to think of him as their savior. Brash, outspoken, and frequently insulting, Fleury has clawed his way to the top of the open-source pile over the past six years. Part of the dislike arises because he's a threat. Even though JBoss brings in only $50 million a year in revenues, at most, from providing training, support, and maintenance services to its users, it has siphoned off some hundreds of millions in market value from the likes of BEA Systems and IBM by giving away free software."

Fleury's Response

[retinaburn]

http://jboss.org/jbossBlog/blog/mfleury/2006/04/01 /JBoss_the_Bad_Boys_of_Open_Source.txt [jboss.org]

Re:I hate typos.

[slavemowgli]

He's definitely not a cult figure, at least, that's for sure. People like RMS, Linus, John "maddog" Hall and so on are cult figures. Larry Wall is a cult figure, in a way. But Fleury? I'm pretty sure most people won't even know him; if you did a survey among FOSS developers and asked them whether they knew who Fleury is, I'd bet that 99 out of 100 wouldn't (and the last one would be one who happens to work on JBoss).

Of course, I just pulled that data out of my arse, so you shouldn't quote me on the exact figures. But seriously...

CNet Article from 2003

[MexicanMenace]

Java servers feel the open source heat [com.com]

Online travel-reservation site GetThere calculated that it saved $1.6 million in licensing fees alone by going with JBoss over commercial Java application servers. That figure will double as the company brings another data center online later this year, said Todd Cinnamon, vice president of engineering at GetThere, which is owned by Sabre.

I worked at GetThere as a Senior Web Developer when they moved from BEA Weblogic to JBoss. Took the core engineering group about two weeks to make the conversion and test the entire codebase. They're still using it to this day.

Now imagine just 50 other companies that have similar needs convert to JBoss over the course of three years. There's your hundreds of millions of dollars.

JBoss threatened to sue Apache Geronimo

[roccomaglio]

The subtitle "Marc Fleury has taken JBoss to the top, but he has alienated many along the way" rings true. JBoss threaten a lawsuit against the Apache Geronimo project for "code similarities". This alienated a lot of open source enthusiasts. Here is the slashdot article about the claims of code similarities http://apache.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/10 /2057218 [slashdot.org].

I keep hearing this about Marc Fleury...

[PCM2]

...I keep hearing that Fleury is unlikeable. That people hate him for his outspoken, brash style, etc. That he's money grubbing, that he's bad for open source -- whatever.

Funny thing is, the one or two times I've spoken to him in person I've walked away going, "Now there's a guy with his head on straight."

To each his own, I guess.

Re:I hate typos.

[Anonymous Coward]

it seems that what JBoss is in a niche market.

Only if you consider J2EE ("enterprise java") web application (EJB, Servlets, JMS) containers a niche market. It certainly has/uses its share of buzzwords, but niche it ain't: it's one of the biggest (if not the biggest) platform for "enterprise computing", ie. big-ass companies running their server-side software on.

JBoss is competitor for (and replacement of) BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, or on lower end, Jakarta Tomcat.

Above is not a comment on goodness or lack thereof of JBoss, J2EE or anything, just pointing out that niche is really a sub-optimal term for describing space JBoss is in.