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Extra! Extra! Lomboz has gone open source!
Posted by felipeal on January 22, 2004 at 11:23 AM | Comments (7)
Lomboz - a J2EE plug-in for Eclipse - has become open source. That is great news for the Eclipse and Open Source communities.
A couple of days ago I was browsing the Web to get more information about JOnAS and JORAM. As both products are offered by the same entity (ObjectWeb), I decided to take a look at their repository. Then, once I clicked on that link, I got the suprise: it said Lomboz was their top download project for the last 30 days!!!
If you do not understand my reaction let me tell a little bit of history: one of the main complaints about Eclipse is the lack of a free (as free-speech) J2EE plug-in, especially something that offered JSP editing and debugging capabilities. So, if you wanted a fully-integrated J2EE environment on top on Eclipse, you would need to install MyEclipseIde (which is an awesome product, but not free) or Lomboz (which was free but as free-beer, but not as free-speech). I think MyEclipseIDE is a better product, although Lomboz is more popular because it is free. But even though it was free, Lomboz had many limitations and bugs that couldn't be fixed by the community (as it was a closed-source product). To make things even more complicated, Lomboz was hosted on SourceForge, which would suggest it was indeed open-source (but the truth is that they used SF resources only for forums and bug reporting).
What intrigues me most though (and hence the reason I am posting this message) is the fact that Lomboz transition to the OSS (Open Source Software) world has not been heralded as someone would expect - in fact, if you google for "Lomboz Open source", the only notification you will find is Eteration's news page, which does not even mentioned *when* that happened.
I like Eclipse - and that comes from a Emacs junkie, whose favorite IDE is called JDK. It's the only IDE that have a nice look feel on Linux, for instance. But the fact that you have to install a lot of plug-ins to make it fully-productive is a pain. Specially when a plug-in breaks something and then you have to re-install Eclipse (and all the plug-ins).
So, now that one of the last pieces of the puzzle has been found, I think it is time for an OSS project that creates an Eclipse distribution bundled with a couple of nice OSS plug-ins (like Lomboz, XMen, JFaceJDBC, etc..) integrated with bundled servers (like JBoss, Tomcat, HSQLDB, etc). We could even call it something like ESAD (Eclipse Studio Application Development) or EIE (Eclipse Integrated Environment) - although I think the first option would have some brand/copyright issues :-).
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Comments
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It's the license, not the fact that it's open source
I see this so many times. People proclaiming "X is open source, yay". Open source does not mean free, nor that you can use it without restriction. I've been caught (by myself!) several times looking at projects only to find that they are open source and GPL, making them far less useful for some projects.
At it turns out, this is open source and LGPL. "Lomboz is now available as open source under LGPL license from at the ObjectWeb Forge."
So yay.
Posted by: jonmountjoy on January 23, 2004 at 12:52 AM
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Re: It's the license, not the fact that it's open source
I agree "open-source" can be a double-edged sword - specially if the license is GPL and you want to incorporate the source in your commercial products. In fact, many projects are realizing that and releasing its sources in "softer" licenses (like LGPL, Apache, BSD, etc...).
Regarding Lomboz specifically, I still think the source is more important than the license itself, as it is a tool, not a library or a server. Of course, if it was GPL and you want to bundle it in your commercial Eclipse distro, you would have problems. But as you mentioned, fortunately it was release LPGL. Yay :-)
Posted by: felipeal on January 23, 2004 at 04:57 AM
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ESAD naming copyright issues?
Just some minor detail / question about
"We could even call it something like ESAD (Eclipse Studio Application Development) or EIE (Eclipse Integrated Environment) - although I think the first option would have some brand/copyright issues :-)."
Isn't orginally eclipse an AlphaWorks project, which is officialy owned by IBM, which in turn owns WSAD and the respective copyrights...
Just some thought that sprung to mind when reading about the branding issue.
Posted by: salp on January 23, 2004 at 06:47 AM
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Re: It's the license, not the fact that it's open source
What double edged-sword are you talkking about? Open SOurce _is_ Open SOurce. If you want to incorporate a GPL app in a commercial product don't complain!!!! why don't you write it yourself? do you think the GPL code just appeared on the net by magic???
When someone writes code he has the right to choose the license. Every Open Source program I write is licensed under the GPL. I invested a lot of time on it, and if you want to distribute it then distribute your source also. You don't like it? then don't use my code in the first place. Yo know, it's still my code even after releasing it under the GPL.
I hate the freeriders and leechers that use and make profit from every Open Source resource they can get, but when you put conditions (like _contributing_ to the community they are getting the stuff from) they talk about "double-edged swords" and "viral licenses".
If you don't like the license, and don't want to contribute back to the community you are free to not use the GPL code and write it yourself.
Posted by: bigjocker on January 23, 2004 at 07:33 AM
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Re: It's the license, not the fact that it's open source
I didn't say I don't like the license or disagree with GPL. In fact, I fixed small bugs in many projects and always sent the patches back to the authors.
So, I agree with you that if you take advantage of an OSS, the minimum you should do is contribute back. But unfortunately most companies don't share this opinion, and the GPL is a tough license model to them.
Posted by: felipeal on January 23, 2004 at 07:47 AM
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ESAD naming copyright issues?
I don't know exactly how Eclipse/WSAD originated. I think - but no sure - that VisualAge evolved into WSAD and then IBM donate WSAD foundation code to the Eclipse project.
Regarding the copyrights, it could still be an issue if, for instance, a company or organization creates a Eclipse bundle (as I sugested) and brand it as ESAD. IBM could argue the company is taking advantage of WSAD's brand (which is copyrighted by IBM) to leverage a similar product (after all, WSAD is like Eclipse bundled with a lot of plug-ins and integrated servers - a good product, might I add). There's been many cases such as this recently, like Windows/Lindows (a company release a Linux distribution called Lindows) and Mozilla Phoenix/Firebird (Phoenix Technologies forced Mozilla's Phoenix to be renamed as Firebird).
Posted by: felipeal on January 23, 2004 at 07:56 AM
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Re: It's the license, not the fact that it's open source
Many companies will contribute to OS projects when they make use of the code, but the GPL is too restrictive in that it demands that ANYTHING that uses a GPL'd module is GPL itself.
THAT is what many companies (and individuals) will not do and is why the LGPL was introduced which allows the use of the module in closed source as long as the module itself remains open and the authors are credited.
Posted by: jwenting on January 23, 2004 at 12:49 PM
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