SpringSource announces SpringSource Application Server (S2AS)

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Andy Piper's Blog | May 8, 2008  11:24 AM | Comments (1)

First of all congratulations to all the folk at SpringSource on the release! I know many of them personally and they are all great guys, great engineers and forward thinking innovators. Shipping an application platform is the next natual evolution for them and I look forward to their release stimulating further innovation from all the vendors in this space.

Now of course I don't personally see this as innovation. Event Server (WLEvS) is a lightweight application platform built using OSGi, Spring and Spring-DM. Indeed, as someone pointed out on TSSJ, BEA has been an active contributor to the Spring-DM project - and we have been using it in BEA products - since its inception. Spring-DM is central to WLEvS, it represents the programming model for WLEvS developers, much like it does in S2AS, and we have extended it using standard Spring hooks. Likewise we have a deployment model based on OSGi bundles, moniitoring, logging, management - the list goes on and I won't bore you with all the URLs. So you can see why claims that S2AS is ground-breaking in some way leave me a little nonplussed. Even OSGi-based LTW, which I think is one of the truly cool features of S2AS, has been around for a while. And the TSSJ comment that accessing OSGi services from webapps was a game-changing innovation, we have been doing for two years now! (We actually found that publishing OSGi services inside a webapp's JNDI tree made a lot more sense to users.)

I do like the dynamic provisioning features of S2AS, although this is not a great deal different to the maven integration done by xbean and initially integrated into Spring-DM by your truly. The key thing is that the SpringSource guys have productized it with a bundle repository backing it. Indeed, that's really the essence of what they have done - taken a set of existing technologies, in various states of readiness, and integrated them into a cohesive, production-quality whole. When I talk to customers that's one of the things they like about Spring in general - it pulls together other open source projects in a way that makes them easy-to-use, with all of the integration issues resolved.

I must talk a little about the choice of GPL3 license since it has generated a fair amount of controversy. Its a mistake. Here's why - SpringSource are a commercial outfit, ultimately they are valued on how well they are able to generate returns on their assets (consultants, IPR, user base etc). Free does not contribute to this. If something is free, regardless of whether it is GPL3 or ASL licensed, it does not contribute directly to this financial return. What matters is what is called in the literature "strategic complimentaries" (if you want the full story read my upcoming MBA thesis ;)) - basically stuff that you control (and can protect) that you can make money off that is driven by the usage of the free stuff. Things like training, consultancy, other proprietary software, support, subscriptions etc - all the things that SpringSource do so well. But the value derived from these things is dependent on one key ingredient - market penetration of the free stuff. The more the free stuff is accepted by the market, the more the stuff you make money off is worth. In fact it gets better than this - get enough penetration and customers will hesitate to use a competitor, a host of 3rd-party services will grow up around your free stuff (what are called "network effects") and customers will end up with switching costs that are too high to be worth contemplating - things like retraining all your developers, getting different tools etc, etc. So penetration is the key. Now you tell me, which license - GPL3 or ASL - is likely to achieve more penetration? The answer is self-evident. So what if some big competitor copies your invention - your invention is free anyway so who cares - what matters is that it's increasing the value of the stuff that matters do you. So I'm with Billy - the application platform will become commodity and its in SpringSource's interest for this to be the case.

Ok I'll get off my soapbox. Just to round this out, look out for the upcoming WLEvS 3.0 release, due out in the summer, which incorporates many of the features - and more - being considered by SpringSource for S2AS 2.0. Clustering, management console, single system image just to name a few.

Comments

• There some nice recognition of BEA's OSGI based products in the TSS thread: http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=49243#251691

  Posted by: masterchief on May 9, 2008 at 6:48 AM