An Application Server with No Strings Attached
By Michiel de Bruijn
When the prerelease version of the latest incarnation of the Enhydra application server hit my desk, two questions came to mind: What's the "wireless" moniker doing in its name, and—because, after all, Enhydra is an open-source project—why do developers have to pay for it?
That last question turned out to be easy to answer. Lutris, the product's original developer, said goodbye to traditional licensing models in 1999, when it made the source to its product freely available, while continuing to generate revenue from support, training, and consultancy. So, while Enhydra is indeed fully open source and available for the cost of download from www.enhydra.org, Lutris Technologies also sells a commercially supported boxed version. Although I don't want to draw parallels between the stability or performance of the two products, you could say this is similar to the Mozilla/Netscape situation.
Which leaves the "why wireless" question. Of course, wireless is—and perhaps by the time you read this article was—the new magic word that any company interested in funding from the remaining VCs, and/or maintaining investor confidence, has to have somewhere in its business plan. But what does all this wireless hype really mean?
Enhydra 3.5 for Wired and Wireless Devices
Lutris Technologies
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