Software Learnings for Make Benefit Glorious Open Source

What a glorious day for Open Source. I don't remember a day as good as this in a long while. My next post is going to include a ton of stuff from the Fedora Summit being held today, so I figured I should get to all the other great news of the day first.

First and Foremost, in what took a back seat in the news today, more than just reaction and raw emotion has started to pour out of the community regarding Novellgate. Today, the Samba Team sent Novell a big Fuck You (Sorry Kids). I'm glad to see projects becoming actively vocal about this and letting Novell know that the GPL and Open Source is not just another whore in their harem of short-term solutions to rectify their long standing history of malfeasance.

Secondly, Sun has finally acted upon their long standing promises of Open Sourcing Java. J2SE, J2ME and yes, even J2EE (read the press release) will now be offered under GPLv2. That's great news all around the table and truly a shot heard 'round the Open Source world. It's even better news for companies offering enterprise Java Application Stacks.

Jonathan Schwartz even got in on some of the Novell bashing fun. Awesome!!! So now, let's give credit where credit is due, Jonathan Schwartz, myself and freedom loving people around the world applaud you. Of course though, in traditional Sun-has-delusions-of-grandeur fashion, they decided to post this on their Open Source Java FAQ site.

"This singular act is the largest contribution ever made to the free software community, and places Sun squarely at the front of the open-source movement - as the single biggest commercial contributor."

Yeah, nice try. I think they make have gotten a little too excited. I really just posted that because I thought spot would get a kick out of reading it.

All in all, today should serve as a validation to all involved or watching the community that we are winning, we are affecting change and we will ultimately succeed in changing the world. It should also serve as a warning to all those skeptics who thought Open Source was and still is going nowhere fast (yes, I'm pointing at you guys at Gartner).