Beehive or hornet's nest? - BEA donates code to Apache

There's a rather odd thread at The Server Side that is generally criticizing BEA for donating code to Apache. Not surprisingly, JBoss CEO Marc Fleury is also dissing the move.

Here's my two cents worth: Kudos to BEA!

One of my first blog's here at Java.net was inspired by issues that I had with the portability of applications created with Weblogic Workshop. Far from being "blown off", I was contacted by Cliff Schmidt at BEA, and we had a great conversation on the balancing of BEA's Profitability and their customer's needs for Portability.

BEA is not open sourcing their "family jewels", and I would never expect them to. What they are open sourcing are some of the components that are necessary to port a "Weblogic Workshop" application to a third-party J2EE server such as Geronimo or JOnAS.

Is Profit a motive for BEA's donations? You bet it is.

Is BEA Profit a bad thing for the Java Community? I'll let you answer that one for yourselves.