Andreas Schaefer's Blog

Open-Source vs. Big Bucks: II

I respectfully disagree with Jacob's view to the JBoss licensing issue. When I and even more true for Rickard started to contribute JBoss had a GPL license. Then Marc asked us if we agree to change it to LGPL but did not mention that he was going to register JBoss as a trademark. Therefore we were not aware of the issues that did arise now. The JBoss Inc. already used legal threads to stop competition with the Apache Geronimo project and so I think that is not a isolated incident.

I do no dispute the use of a trademark in a business but here an open-source project, a commercial entity and a trademark are combined in a such a way that the JBoss Inc. can profit from the open-source project without any competition. Matthias, from the JBoss Issue Blog, pointed out that Bea registered its name as trademark for the product and services but Weblogic is only a registered trademark for the product. This way I can advertise training for the Weblogic application server as long as I do not use the Bea trademark with it.

Even thought this issue that came up with JBoss it is a much bigger issue than that. It has implication on how open-source project conduct their business and that contributors have the right to know upfront on what their are getting into. This is also a question about ethics, control and protection of an open-source project. I always thought that the trademark of Linux and JBoss are there to protect the project from a sleazy opportunist that uses the trademark to exploit a successful open-source project. Now it seems that this one comes within its own ranks and that the idea of the protection was just a nice cover.

JBoss Inc. can make as much money of the project as they like and I am perfectly happy with that. On the other hand I know more about JBoss than most of the people with a JBoss certification or partnership with the JBoss Inc. so why shouldn't I be allowed to give training about JBoss?

Have fun - Andy

Comments

• Andreas, my comments were pointed at the general java community (who don't really have a stake or previous knowledge surrounding Rickard's requests). I'm not saying that JBoss is right or anyone is right (the whole Geronimo deal as an example). I've just been really disappointed with community as a whole. I've heard from people within JBoss and I've read the stuff online, it's just a mess that is only hurting the open source community by publically going back and forth in this manner.

  Posted by: jhook on October 12, 2005 at 12:35 PM

• 
  Hi Jacob, it was not my intention to hurt the open-source community. Nevertheless I think that these issues would have arisen eventually anyhow and I think that these issues must be addressed in the community to avoid that such a mess happens again. So far most contributors just hopped that everyone plays by the rules but it was inevitable that this issue would come up one day. Right now the only way to avoid the JBoss Issue is to fork the project and give it another name but this would harm the community even more.

  Posted by: schaefa on October 12, 2005 at 01:07 PM

• I think you need to learn a bit about trademarks before you say ignorant things like "So why shouldn't I be allowed to give training about JBoss?"

  Posted by: patriot1burke on October 18, 2005 at 08:46 PM

• 
  The only thing I can say is: Let's go and solve that issue.
  

  Posted by: schaefa on October 18, 2005 at 09:49 PM

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