Can Sun's GlassFish turn on master Oracle?

More like IBM than you know

WAS v WAS CE

How well having both a free and paid for application server has done for IBM on a market share or sales basis is hard to tell. After repeated efforts, IBM was not able (or unwilling) to provide us with any WAS CE numbers.

One theory has it, that if Big Blue thought WAS CE was stealing business from WAS, it wouldn't have kept offering the free option since 2005.

The other view is that if WAS CE is indeed taking business from WAS, IBM is still a winner because it owns WAS CE rather than Gluecode still being an independent player. IBM therefore retains customer accounts and can continue selling its related middleware, applications, and services.

Such a play could also benefit Oracle. Again, it's difficult to accurately gauge actual uptake of Glassfish. The old Sun would only give out download numbers, which were no indication of actual use. In February 2009, for example, Sun claimed 192,776 downloads of the GlassFish software development kit in a single month.

But none of the developers or middleware companies The Reg has ever talked to say they have ever come across GlassFish in the market.

The big question is what happens next with GlassFish?

Balancing act

Sun took the lazy way out on GlassFish - putting the code into the community from its previously closed EE application server and hoping people would bite.

Oracle has promised to be more proactive: adding features from WebLogic. Depending on what features Oracle does add, this might make GlassFish a more compelling proposition and mean it finally sees some genuine uptake in real business scenarios.

That makes GlassFish a balancing act for Oracle: Making it fast enough and sufficiently easy to manage to attract open-sourcers and developers, but not so good that it becomes a threat to WebLogic. To stop developers getting too enthusiastic about a future GlassFish, Oracle may be forced to offer the app server "off menu" - where you need to know the right code word as you do at US burger chain In-N-Out Burger to get the secret menu.

What remains to be seen is exactly how sincere Oracle is in keeping GlassFish alive and well inside the database giant's host body, and whether that project will finally turn on its father. ®