Waltham, Massachusetts-based Novell has clarified its earlier claim that JBoss changed some of its license terms – a suggestion denied by the Java middleware provider – and explained that concerns over the licensing of specific JBoss AS components led it to exclude the application server from SLES 10.
As part of the SUSE Linux Enterprise development process, we evaluate the licensing for each package that we ship in our distribution. While packages like JBoss are distributed under the LGPL license, there are many components which are proprietary technologies from third parties, said Novell’s director of marketing for Linux and open platform solutions, Justin Steinman. We found several components in JBoss 4 that fit this profile. We checked with JBoss and the two areas in question, the SRP security extensions and the application client, ship under licenses that have questionable redistribution rights for Novell.
Novell had previously included JBoss AS 3.23 in the Novell Linux Desktop and SLES 9 distributions as the two companies enjoyed a close relationship based on a two-year old support agreement, but Steinman said concerns related to the new components led to the exclusion of JBoss 4 from SLES.
We didn’t want to modify the JBoss package and we couldn’t get legal clarification until March 29, 2006. At that time, it was too late to include JBoss 4 in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, as the SLES 10 beta test was well underway, he said.
JBoss’s CTO, Sacha Labourey recently told Computer Business Review the company could not understand Novell’s claim that it had changed its licensing. To be frank, there is no change in the license. There is no change for us, no change in the business relationship as well, he said.
While the decision to drop JBoss looked like a response to Red Hat’s acquisition of JBoss, Novell’s Steinman maintained that the decision was made before Linux rival Red Hat announced the acquisition. Our decision not to ship JBoss4 in SLES 10 was made on March 29. The Red Hat acquisition of JBoss was announced on April 10. There is no connection between the removal of JBoss 4 from SLES 10 and the acquisition of JBoss by Red Hat, he said.
While JBoss is no longer the default application server shipping with SUSE Linux Enterprise, Novell has stated that it will continue to offer support for JBoss middleware running on SLES. The Linux distribution ships with Apache Geronimo, which Novell had planned to include in the distribution since it struck a strategic alliance with IBM in December 2005.
