JBoss-Microsoft partnership announced
Published: 27 Sep 2005 17:10 BST
Two companies on opposite sides of the open source philosophical divide, Microsoft and JBoss, have signed a partnership to make their server software work together better.
Microsoft and JBoss said on Tuesday they'll work to make JBoss' Java application server software work well with Microsoft's Windows and higher-level software. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The companies said the collaboration makes sense, despite their philosophical differences. "JBoss is experiencing tremendous growth and is a driving force of consolidation of the Java space," said Bill Hilf, Microsoft's director of platform technology strategy. And Shaun Connolly, vice-president of product management at JBoss, said that more than half of its customers use the JBoss Enterprise Middleware System product on Windows.
Most of JBoss' software is governed by the LGPL . Unlike the GPL, the LGPL makes it possible to tightly integrate LGPL code with software that uses proprietary code.
Specifically, the companies expect their collaboration to achieve interoperability in several domains:
- Microsoft's Active Directory — so the companies' software has integrated sign-on and federated identity management mechanisms.
- Web services standards, which govern how applications employ services available on a group of often loosely connected servers.
- Management with Microsoft Operations Manager.
- SQL Server, Microsoft's database software, with JBoss' Hibernate and Enterprise JavaBeans software.
The companies announced the deal on the first day of BEA World, a conference sponsored by a mutual rival of Microsoft and JBoss, BEA.
IBM is another competitor in the proprietary software domain, while open source competitors include the Apache Software Foundation and Red Hat. Sun offers a combination of proprietary and open source software in the market, but eventually is moving it all toward open source.
Microsoft also has buried the hatchet with Sun in a partnership that includes sign-on and identity management software.
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