March 21, 2003
Open Source uptake in Belgium
Yesterday, we had an interesting meeting with some colleague, also working in the field of Java and Open Source. Even though we could be regarded as competitors by the outside world, it was good to see we were able to exchange "thoughts and feelings":http://blogs.cocoondev.org/tomk/ open and freely. The topic of discussion was the preparation of a new seminar on 'the practical use of some Java Open Source tools in real-world projects', presenting an overview of what is out there, hopefully explaining to people what they are missing if they restrict themselves to the commercial IDEs and things packaged with the appserver of their (boss') liking. Basically, we'll be skimming subjects like Ant, Hibernate, XDoclet, JBoss CMP, Forrest, Cocoon and some more, and how you can put these wonderful open source frameworks to practical use in a project. Of course, we'll be preaching sound development practices, like unit testing, URI namespace management and _real_ thinking about O/R mapping, things which are obvious to us, but apparently not to the Belgian market in general.
Of course, we also have been discussing 'business' in general, and what differentiates us from other Java consultants. To be frank, the situation in Belgium isn't very stimulating if you are trying to adopt new business models based upon, or around Open Source. You have a huge league of 'Linux companies', which are a lot into hardware and infrastructure, not so much as into application architecture and development as we do. So the message of open source Java _being good for you_ is kinda obfuscated by the image of bearded Linux gurus recompiling kernels and playing around with iptables. To the market, Open Source == Linux. To us, Linux is _only_ an operating system, for which luckily there exists a Java VM, so that we can do our thing. Still, we see Linux companies offering end-to-end solutions, installing groupware packages, or doing some PHP development on top of their "LAMP":http://www.onlamp.com/ environment. We've seen some truly horrific 'applications' being built and deployed like that.
In the end, much of this has to do with identity and positioning, and the uptake of it by the outside world. What gives if you are claiming to be able to learn people to do things _the right way_, if they can get two lousy developers for the same price? What gives if you want to teach people into being capable of building _extensible_ applications, in the era of the one-year-CxO? What gives to be modest about the number of open source projects you are specialized in, if other people don't see _intimate_ knowledge of codebase _and_ community as a strict requirement before saying _'I'm a Tomcat/Ant/Cocoon/whatnot guru'_?
_Update:_ "Hi, Werner":http://www.shiftat.com/blog/page/werner/20030321#opensource_and_business_ethics ;-)
Comments
Hah! funny, I have had a similar reaction once or twice here in Australia when I start talking about opensource solutions. The ironic thing is that I don't even use Linux. Hibernate is developed on Windows, mainly ;)
Posted by: Gavin at March 25, 2003 12:58 PM