Jonathan Schwartz, C|Net, and me

After Derby graduated last week, those of us working on Derby thought it would be a great time to get the word out about Derby and Sun's support of Derby. Noticing that Jonathan Schwartz was scheduled for a “fireside chat” with Nat Torkington the following Wednesday at OSCON, we saw it as a golden opportunity for us to reach a large audience to congratulate Apache Derby for graduating, to announce that Sun is putting resources behind Derby, and how we think it's a great Java database.

Our marketing team worked overtime to work up the chain of command to get approval, get the message just right, get the talking points to Jonathan. Emails flying, phones ringing. As a Derby committer I got sucked into all of this to help ensure “technical accuracy” -- that and I always seem to have an opinion and can't keep my mouth shut.

So it was with great expectations that I attended the Wednesday keynote session. I sat through a number of talks, some good, some not so good, waiting for the “great moment.” The speaker before Jonathan, Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo!, jabbed that he wanted to move quickly through his slides so he could hear Jonathan explain why Sun was still backing Solaris (chortle chortle). Sigh...

So, up comes Jonathan, and this is no fireside chat. After an attempt at a “soft question” about the return of Andy Bechtolsteim that was a bit of a flop, Nat launches into the expected “hard questions” for Sun – what do you think about Apache Harmony , why are we using CDDL rather than a more standard open source license, what do you think about software patents, etc. More on this can be gleaned from this Eweek article and Phil Windley's blog.

Anyway, the interview was fast and somewhat intense, ending in under ten minutes. There was one brief sub-second moment where the word “Derby” came out of Jonathan's mouth. It shot by like a 50-person town on the open highway – you blink and you miss it. No splash, no announcement. OK.

I had put together a Derby BoF assuming that there would be some buzz, but none was there. The BoF was at 8:30 at night with about 15 other BoFs, and some kind of party going on elsewhere. Besides myself and two other Derby representatives from IBM, only three people showed up to the BoF, scattered forlornly across a sea of chairs. Well, what the heck. I brought up my slides, shared some details about Derby and Sun's involvement, and we went down various ratholes until we were all exhausted and we all went home.

The next morning I get emails from our PR and marketing folks and two different Derby engineers about a C|net article that just came out. It talks about Derby graduating, it's 10.1 release, and Sun's involvement in Derby. Our PR folks are running around trying to figure out where this information came from (it even says “according to Sun” at one point), as they had nothing to do with it. They don't like feeling out of control like this. Sitting on the lobby floor with my laptop (everyone seems to sit on the floor here) and my cellphone cradled in my ear listening in on a con call about this (“Must Get New Headset,” I remind myself), I start reading the article. An uncomfortable feeling of recognition washes over me. All the details were pretty much verbatim from what I shared at my BoF. As I share this with the folks on the phone, I mentally picture them shaking their heads in disbelief.

So there you have it. Our attempt to have Jonathan Schwartz talk about Derby in front of 2,000 people fizzles out, and then a lone engineer in an room with three other people at 8:30 at night gets the news out.

P.S. My OSCON trip ended with some great icing on the cake. I get onto the MAX light rail to head off to the airport; it's crowded, but I find an empty pair of seats and squeeze myself and my luggage over to let one more person sit down. A somewhat tired-looking man with his own luggage sits down next to me with a word of thanks.

After a moment of trying to figure out where I know his face, I recognize it's Tim O'Reilly. Feeling a bit punchy, I ask him what he's doing sneaking off before his conference was over (I mean, it does have his name on it). He says something about other meetings, and I say “I won't tell anyone.” Well, I guess I lied :) Anyway, we had a great conversation about blogging and Derby and the social impact of open source in developing countries and what it's like trying to publish technical books fast enough so they stay relevant. I always thought he was a nice guy when I heard him talk, and now I'm convinced of it. Wish there were more Presidents/CEOs like that.