I've always found open source to be a strange concept, I mean, why would you want the source code unless you're prepared to become a software product company? However, clearly this notion has gained interest in the past few years, and the SOA space has many players, including open source application servers, open source governance tools, and open source ESBs.

"Open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials—typically, their source code. Some consider it as a philosophy, and others consider it as a pragmatic methodology."

According to Wikipedia.

"Before open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; the term open source gained popularity with the rise of the Internet and its enabling of diverse production models, communication paths, and interactive communities."

Okay, not sure get that. However, what is clear is that end users like buying software this way, and what's more it seems to be much less expensive than the same products sold in non-open source ways. I do get that, and that's what is really driving things here I think. I love it when technology companies do things just as well as the big guys, but charge much less.

I sat next to Dave Rosenburg, the CEO of MuleSource last week at the SOA Executive Forum, in the speaker's room. He and I were moderating panels at the same time, and he took me through is open source ESB product "Mule Platform."

See the Mule architecture here

Mule came on my radar screen when I was at Bridgewerx. I asked my guys to look at it for use within the appliance. I'm sure other SOA and Web 2.0 product companies had the same idea, with MuleSource or somebody else. Indeed, open source does make sense, almost always, if you're looking to make it part of your product because of the adaptability.

After looking at dozens of ESBs out there, both complex and simplistic, I think that Mule has all of the major features that many ESB technology buyers are looking for, and if you drink the open source Kool-Aid, than this product will be more compelling.

"Designed to support high-performance multi-protocol transactions, Mule can be used for system to system messaging, as transactional middleware, or as part of an application server. The extensible nature of the core Mule server, along with the open source code base, allows developers to maintain control of their infrastructure."

In essence mule is not looking to be soup-to-nuts, just the nuts, and if you don't like the nuts you can change the nuts. It's designed to work and play well with a variety of different technologies (See diagram below), and what's more, if the product does not meet your specific needs you can adapt it yourself. Indeed, you could consider Mule a developer's product. It can run within a transactional container, such as EJB, work with JMS, and coexist inside very different problem domains.

There are other open source ESBs, including offerings from Iona and Jitterbit.

A productive use of the 10 minutes or so I spent with Dave, I think.

Posted by Dave Linthicum on November 12, 2006 05:20 AM