In light of losing some of its development group to a start-up, open-source software supplier JBoss Group this week will announce new strategic hiring in its developer ranks.
The Atlanta-based open-source Java application server vendor also indicated that it has come closer to terms with Sun Microsystems Inc. over the licensing of the toolkits and testing environments related to Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) certification.
JBoss announced the hire of Remy Maucherat, who used to work for Sun. JBoss officials said Maucherat is considered among the top Apache Tomcat developers around. And JBoss has “recognized Tomcat as the dominant player in the J2EE servlet engine space.
“Our recognition of Tomcats high quality has spurred our efforts to take a more active role in Tomcat development,” a JBoss spokeswoman said.
In June, the JBoss Group lost two developers to the Bloomington, Minn., start-up known as Core Developers Network LLC.
“There were two guys from the JBoss Group,” that left, Marc Fleury, chief executive of JBoss told eWEEK at the time. “One of the guys wanted to be partner, but hed only been there eight months.”
In effect, Fleury said his company only lost two developers—Dain Sundstrom and David Jencks. “The impact in the project is zero. We lost two out of 90 read/write guys,” he said. “And the two had six customers out of 175 to 200 we now have. And no customers are dropping their JBoss contracts.”
Meanwhile, JBoss said it is moving closer to gaining certification for its Java application server under the Sun certification process. The company has committed significant resources to gaining certification, including the move to place Bob Bickel, former general manager of middleware at Hewlett-Packard Co. to lead discussions with Sun to negotiate a J2EE certification contract.
In addition, JBoss has agreed to pay the licensing fees associated with the certification, the company said. Previously JBoss had balked at that.