Commercial OpenSource: SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson (Part 6)

SM: I do like that you initially started out as a bootstrapped company. Do you think that helped you focus in the beginning? RJ: One reason I am happy that we waited for three years prior to being funded, aside from figuring things out without the potentially unwanted help from VCs, is that we had

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Commercial OpenSource: SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson (Part 5)

SM: If you are doing an OpenSource application server I have no problem gauging the size of that market. RJ: Obviously there was already one significant player in that space, JBoss. JBoss was really largely a commodity play similar to MySQL. We have previously brought genuine, new ideas to market, and that is what we

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Commercial OpenSource: SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson (Part 3)

SM: When you put your framework out there in the OpenSource domain you did it as an individual, correct? What went through your mind as you saw the adoption? RJ: I have always had a somewhat hardnosed attitude about it. When I was writing the book, I was doing it to help build my personal

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Commercial OpenSource: SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson (Part 2)

SM: What kind of work did you do in your early IT career? RJ: I started off as a regular developer and rapidly moved into senior architect roles. I worked for a variety of companies in the London area, including the Pearson Group, who own the Financial Times.

Commercial OpenSource: SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson (Part 1)

Rod Johnson is an accomplished author (‘Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development’ and ‘J2EE without EJB’), a world authority on Java and J2EE, and an entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of SpringSource, which builds Java infrastructure software. Rod holds a BA with Honors in Computer Science, Mathematics and Musicology as well as a

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The Audacity of Tom Costello (Part 7)

SM: If I were planning a trip to Ireland, where would Cuil take me? TC: I would hope we would take you to the more interesting places and to the path less traveled. My parents run a bed and breakfast north of Dublin. Everyone lands at Dublin and goes south.

The Audacity of Tom Costello (Part 6)

SM: That is your hypothesis, which is fine. I think there are vertical search cases which have broken out of the pack and been very successful. TC: I do think vertical search works. There is no question that in places people can manage to get themselves established as an idea.

The Audacity of Tom Costello (Part 5)

SM: Is there really a high degree of mistrust in Europe? TC: In Ireland you do not give your credit card to a waiter at restaurant. The waiter will bring the machine to your table where you swipe it yourself and enter your PIN. There is a high degree of mistrust.