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The Problem with Sun Microsystems
By Raymond Keckler | February 5, 2008
At my day job we use Glassfish from Sun Microsystems. Glassfish is opensource. It is basically the beta platform for the Sun Java Application Server 9.X. We are gradually moving toward Java-centric applications and Glassfish is working for us. We decided to look for support. I called up my Sun representative to ask about support for Glassfish. I learned that Glassfish does not have support, but the Sun Java Application Server (SJAS) does. SJAS can be downloaded for free. It can even be used commercially for free. However, if you want support, you must buy the support and the license to use SJAS.
I am all for making a buck, but this seemed a little strange. You offer an application for free and everyone can use it for commercial purposes. Instead of just selling support you also sell the license for the software if they want support. There is nothing written on the web site for support that says you have to buy a license for the software. It really makes you think about what Sun is doing, not to mention that the license for the software is six times as much as for the support.
So, Sun gets you to use the free software for your business. You get dependent on the software for your business. You get to a certain point and realize that you need support to continue your business without any hiccups. Now you realize that you can have support after you dole out large amounts of money to buy the software they said you could use for free. What do you think they are going to do with MySQL? They just bought MySQL, but MySQL is also free. You can buy support for MySQL. They do not require you to purchase licenses for MySQL in order to buy support. Now that Sun has purchased MySQL, are they going to use the same process they use on SJAS? Are they now going to make a customer buy licenses for MySQL in order to buy support while still offering MySQL for free? I am not sure but it doesn’t look good to me.
Maybe I should look at JBoss and PostgreSQL.
April 7th, 2008 at 8:56 am
luckily with open source another company could offer support — hopefully the market will encourage some company to do this for glassfish/SJAS