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Sun In The Snakepit

This past weekend at Sun Tech Days in Sydney offered up further evidence that open-source acquisitions are about human talent, not merely acquiring tools 'n technologies.  Sun welcomed two new employees into its fold, Ted Leung and Frank Wierzbicki, two developers of repute who will be working on something unmistakably Sun-specific but also open source: the Python-derived Jython.

A bit of context: Jython already is a well-developed project (it's in revision 2.2.1) to run the Python language in a Java virtual machine and allow an intermingling of the two languages.  Since Java is still very much Sun's pride and joy, it makes sense for them to pick up on the talents of people who want to extend on Java's legacy in creative ways.

Wierzbicki, in a blog post, answers the first question that comes to everyone's mind about this:

First off, just in case anyone is worried: Jython is going to remain completely open source. Sun has applied for membership to the Python Software Foundation and the PSF will continue to be the steward of Jython's code. This move by Sun means that Jython is going to get some of the attention that it needs to move forward.

Leung's comments hint at some of the possible issues that Sun has faced:

It's no secret that I have not been a fan of Sun's handling of the open sourcing of Java, and it seems like OpenSolaris is having some governance problems of its own at the moment. However, if you look at the way that JRuby has been handled, you'll see that there are parts of Sun that are learning how to work with a community, and doing a very good job of it.

JRuby, incidentally, is another instance of an open source language that's been ported to work in the JVM.  That makes Sun's possible upcoming work with Jython part of an existing trend to make the JVM into a broad-spectrum framework for multiple languages.

The one thing Sun almost certainly is going to have to learn -- if it hasn't already -- is that the people who make the magic need to be left to do exactly that.  Most, if not all, open source acquisitions are about the development team and the people power behind the project, and not just the project itself.

The above comments also lead me to think that another side effect of the acquisitions being about people and not merely projects is that the people themselves can in turn serve (if only informally) as evangelists for the parent outfit.  The more people you have willing to say "yep, they're a friend to open source", the better it'll look for you the next time you make another open source pick-up.

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