When everyone is looking at building applications using so called IDE and then integrating them all using some EAI or Messaging technology, Workshop provides a way to integrate the applications while building that too in rapid manner. Sure Workshop is ahead of the game. To preach the innovation to the community the open source stand has been taken. I second Peter's comment and partially disagree to Joe's comments.

But I want to *pay* for software. Don''t you guys get it?

Grow up? How can an industry survive without a revenue stream? Outsourcing is a symptom of the long-term disease of not paying for software. The denial is so strong that free of charge is regarded as some kind of virtue. We''ve been had.

Joe, you got it all backwards and upside down. From what I''ve heard the single most important reason for open-sourcing the Workshop Framework is that BEA can''t afford to wait for the standardization path to be completed. The rest, read IBM are doing their best to put suitable obsticles in BEAs path and instead promote their own open source tool Eclipse.
So open-sourcing the Workshop framework is a way for BEA to promote cutting edge technology whilst avoiding the vendor lock-in discussion.
In the end this will benefit everyone. The developers and ISV''s will get a powerful framework for free. The customer will get cheaper software faster. The J2EE community can take on the MS battle more efficiently and BEA can sell WebLogic Platform (which BTW is much more than an app.server) for enterprise customers. Those with less money can use Tomcat and use the very same Workshop framework for relevant parts of their application. I really can''t see any losers in this.
So the Netscape analogy is far-fetched at the best. This is a Co knowing exactly what needs to be done and executes well on that vision.
But I have to agree with one point and that is that the market might not be ready for the Workshop vision where all kinds of development and integration comes together in an easy to use environment. That however will change in the near future, we can''t affort to waste time and money building software systems like we have for the last 30+ years, it''s time to grow up and become an industry. They way to do that is simple yet hard, we need to be able to build component based systems where re-use is an architectural foundation not a vision. Workshop and the Behive framework might very well be that road to success.

i agree with Joe. I see BEA going down like Netscape.Just by sellig application server they have no chance of winning the app server market esp from their rivals IBM who seem to be giving App server for free or at a discount to some of their clients when the clients purchase some of their h/ware of services.

I think BEA would have come up with some great ideas if they are to survive this battle. The could probably look ahead in the future and work on some of the emerging concepts like Utility computing, grid computing etc and try to come back. All the best to them.