> "I think open source for open
> source's sake has been useless," Chuang said.

Nice shot in the foot there, Sir. :-)

BEA, for all I can tell, has always been somewhat of a black sheep of a wolf in sheep clothing. It only pretends to be doing open source-y typa things.

Heh. Hypocrisy.

Hey Roy,

I was there when Alfred made those comments yesterday afternoon at the BEAWorld conference. What he said did make sense to me. His intent with that comment, I believe, was to say that it's stupid to open source millions of lines of code (say for the kernel of an OS), if you don't really have any intention of or need to evolve that code in an open source, community-driven environment. That, as he put it, is to do "open source for open source's sake."

b.

I'll take a crack at explaining Alfred's position, Dave.

1. First quote: As you and I have discussed, there are both inbound and outbound OSS dimensions in almost every OSS supplier's operation. BEA has no problem with using inbound to reduce its R&D costs and realizes it has to give back. Why not give back in the develolpment arena, where almost all meaningful software is OSS already? BEA actually has been nibbling around the edges of this since right before Zimbra's Scott Dietzen left BEA in 2003/2004 (and probably would have moved more quickly had Scott, Adam Bosworth and Tod Nielsen not left BEA).

2. Second quote: I think Brad Shimmin probably has it right in his answer above but there may be a "open" vs. "free" dimension to the quote as well. Either way, I have never seen any indication that BEA "hates OSS."

3. Third quote: Thankfully IMO this has nothing directly to do with OSS based on my reading fellow Research 2.0 analyst Kris Tuttle's take on BEAWorld (http://research2zero.com/blog/2007/09/11/bea-big-and-bold-as-usual-as-soasaas-goes-small-and-silent/). This is the sort of thing you say to investors to keep buying your stock. Note that it comes from BEA's recent financial analyst call.

I think this means that BEA is getting the OSS religion (because it makes business sense). Better late than never. Every one is welcome (and unlike many OSS observers, I mean every one).

"Is it me or is BEA getting even weirder?"

Could be you, could be BEA.

"'I think open source for open source's sake has been useless,' Chuang said."

It depends on what he means by "open source's sake." If he means putting an open source license on the code, publishing it on a web site and not doing anything with it after that (e.g. building a community), then I'd say he's right.