Re: Anybody checked this out? Projectdream.org

First, from a business perspective, how will companies like Zend feel about this? On one hand IBM courts them into a partnership, but on the other hand develops its own runtime engine for PHP applications. How will the Java community feel about this? On one hand IBM creates an application server supporting J2EE specifications and related standards, but on the other hand snubs the J2EE community in favor of architectures and community-building ideas plagiarized freely from Zend and Ruby on Rails communities. How will the open-source community feel about this? On one hand IBM enjoys access to a lot of great code, and may have even reference a lot of it to create this project, but on the other hand says to themselves that they don't want to make the same mistake by offering an open-source license to their code. It seems to me that this project could be the beginning of the end of partnerships between IBM and members of the open-source community, if
not the beginning of the end of open-source as a business model - it works until the 500 pound gorilla - the company with all the muscle joins the fray. IBM clearly wants to involve a lot of people through a community process, but not transfer their intellectual property.

From a technological perspective, how will IBM's runtime engine for PHP written in Java compare with Zend's which is written in C - performance wise?

Actually it appears to me that the runtime engine for PHP is there just to leverage support from the PHP community while IBM builds support for Groovy script. And while IBM characterizes Project Zero as a scripting runtime for Groovy and PHP, the Groovy code is actually compiled into Java classes, which probably means it's compiled into machine code via JIT at runtime, so the departure from J2EE appears to be that you deploy script to the server rather than deploying JAR or WAR files.

The similarities between the structure of a Groovy application and a Ruby on Rails application is striking. It's like IBM is leveraging the great ideas of others, while not allowing themselves to be pinned down by any other intellectual property that they don't own.

Nathan Andelin


----- Original Message ----
From: albartell <albartell@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries <web400@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2007 6:11:27 AM
Subject: [WEB400] Anybody checked this out? Projectdream.org

http://www.projectzero.org

Sounds interesting for the smaller shops out there. I just read about it in
SD Times (http://www.sdtimes.com/article/LatestNews-20070715-36.html) - my
new favorite trade rag to read on the... the... while I am relaxing :-)

Aaron Bartell