Open-Source Geronimo Takes on WebLogic, WebSphere - ' Certifying Geronimo ' (
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The foundation reviewed the code and concluded that no property rights violation existed in November 2003. But it didn't return its reply to JBoss until the end of October. "We are a volunteer organization," and the official reply was "put on the back burner because it wasn't a priority for us," Magnusson said.
"We did our due diligence," and the foundation is confident that there are no grounds for JBoss to proceed further, he said. "We just want to put this behind us at this point," Magnusson said. It remains to be seen, he said, whether JBoss will raise any additional questions or objections.
Magnusson declined to predict when Geronimo will be certified and ready to go to market as a finished product.
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In August 2003, Geronimo team members suggested that the application server would be completed in a year, Magnusson said.
That prediction took on a life of its own and became a deadline of Aug. 6, 2004, which came and went. "It was really a joke and nobody got the joke," he said. Now, the Geronimo team is no longer making firm predictions on when the server will be ready, he said.
Sam Ruby, a member of the ASF's board of directors and a senior technical staff member with IBM's Emerging Technology group in Raleigh, N.C., said he is not personally involved in building J2EE applications or running a J2EE application server.
"But there are IBMers who are interested in Geronimo, and I'm interested in helping those people within IBM" who want to participate in the effort to bring an open-source J2EE application server to the market, Ruby said.
Click here to read Sean Gallagher's opinion about what Sun hopes to achieve with its latest marketing campaign for Solaris 10 and Java.
Such an application server will have value in the market, Ruby said, adding that he has seen no indication that either IBM or Sun would view the server as a serious competitive threat to their own products.
Sun is working closely with the Geronimo development team on certification, and that process is working smoothly, Ruby said. "Sun seems to be actively supporting this effort, and I don't see any issues" involving perceived market rivalries, he said.
