| Ubuntu and Sun vs. Red Hat and JBoss? |
Apr. 20, 2007
In chess, there is a tactical motif called an x-ray. In it, the effect of an attacking piece is felt primarily not by the piece that's actively being attacked, but by the piece that is shielded from the direct attack by the attacked piece.
In the release of Ubuntu 7.04, with its optional Sun Java application server stack, the actively attacked piece is Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but JBoss is the real target.
Stephen O'Grady, a software industry analyst for RedMonk, describes the packing of Sun's open-source JEE (Java Enterprise Edition) 5 GlassFish application server, the Java SE Development Kit 6, Java DB 10.2, the Sun-supported version of the Apache Derby relational database manager, and the NetBeans IDE (integrated development environment) 5.5. as "a solid deal from a Sun perspective."
"I've argued for some time now that the Debian/Ubuntu/etc. non-commercial ecosystem is collectively larger than either the Red Hat or SUSE versions, and Ubuntu is obviously phenomenally popular in its own right, so this is an excellent channel opportunity," said O'Grady.
As Gordon Haff, senior analyst for research house Illuminata noted, "One of the nice things about open source is that anyone can assemble just about any mix of components they want. But rarely does it have any near-term effect on more established projects and combinations of projects."
Still, in a press conference on April 20, Ian Murdock, Sun's new chief operating systems officer and the founder of the Debian Linux distribution, said, "This is the first time the Java platform has been fully integrated into a Linux distribution to this extent. Our key goal here is to make Sun's Java technology more accessible to Linux developers."
Mark Shuttleworth, the CEO of Canonical Ltd., the company behind Ubuntu, said, "My hope is that these [Java] packages will migrate into Debian and into other distributions." He also added that, while the Eclipse IDE is already available in Ubuntu, NetBeans is his own "preferred Java development environment."
All this is now possible because Sun has been open-sourcing its core Java technology under the GPLv2 since November 2006. At the time, Rich Green, Sun's executive vice president of software, in a statement said, "With the JDK [Java Development Kit] released as free software under the GPL, Sun will be working closely with distributors of the GNU/Linux operating system, who will soon be able to include the JDK as part of the open-source repositories that are commonly included with GNU/Linux distributions." The goal is to make Java an important Linux language and JEE an important application server. Sun's JEE, to be exact.
Ubuntu has recently become a major Sun partner. With its support for the UltraSPARC T1 processor on Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers and its popularity, Ubuntu is a perfect Linux for Sun to begin its inroads into the Linux application server and development market.
Of course, Red Hat and JBoss are already there. Since Red Hat acquired the Java application server company, Red Hat has been integrating it deeper both into its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) distribution and into its business plans.
Still, Shuttleworth said, "We don't want to eat up our way up the development stack; we partner with the best people." That said, "It [Ubuntu/Sun vs. Red Hat/JBoss] is an interesting contrast. Red Hat feels they need to own the brand, while we partner."
Jeet Kaul, Sun's vice president for Java developer platforms added, "We are trying to reach a larger development community. The software stack [that comes with Ubuntu] is enterprise-ready and high performance. With it, people can develop and deploy Java applications on Ubuntu."
Haff commented, though, that "JBoss remains the clear open-source application server leader and Eclipse the preferred development framework. This doesn't make the Sun/Canonical stack bad in any way. There's just no particular reason to think it will have a market impact anytime soon."
O'Grady added: "The larger question will be whether this will encourage or spur Java development on top of Linux, and the jury's still out there. I expect this to be an attractive option for those seeking Java, but that LAMP will remain the primary market choice for Ubuntu."
Red Hat was asked for a comment, but has not yet replied. The Linux company did, however, inform Linux-Watch.com that on April 24 it will be announcing the next steps in its JBoss middleware strategy.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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