Linux-Corba spat gets readers' goats

React in fury to senior source's statement

Readers have responded in fury and outrage to an article prompted by a senior source at the Object Management Group (OMG) claiming that Corba and Linux do not make happy bed partners.

Yesterday, an informed source at the OMG told The Register that because there isn’t much money in Linux, the group is not particularly interested in the OS.

Patrick Phalen, said: “Whoever ‘she’ [the source of the story] is, she's either out of touch or else she's been conscripted to issue such FUD. Free CORBA (that's all caps, btw) is available from a multitude and growing number of sources. See here for tables of available implementations.”

Phalen said: “Take a look at the Fnorb free ORB implemented entirely in Python (which is also free) at Fnorb.”

He added: “Either your "source" has a financial dependence on some particular commercial ORB or she's a Microsoft shill, since Microsoft would love to kill CORBA and Linux in one blow.”

And Matthew Benjamin wrote: “You have every reason to publish this, I'm sure it's true your CORBA source said these things. If I were a CORBA vendor, I wouldn't want free software authors giving CORBA implementations away free, especially with source code. If people did that, who would buy my ORB? Of course, there is the little problem that Microsoft is already giving COM/DCOM/COM+ away in an effort to kill CORBA. Thus free CORBA may save CORBA, at the price of some margin among the commercial vendors.

However, Benjamin pointed out that the Corba specification of itself is free. He said: “There is one small problem. Some of the statements you quote are false. Being a hip technojournalist doesn't require you to knowingly publish half-truths or--worse--false statements.”

He added: “CORBA is a specification, not an implementation. It does not cost money. Anyone can implement CORBA if s/he wants--and sell or not sell, bury or give away her implementation without consulting the OMG.” ®

* Register Fact .18 micron. Mike Magee is not a hip technojournalist. He's old.