Apache ActiveMQ 5.0 Released

The long anticipated Apache ActiveMQ 5.0 has finally been released! Congratulations all around, a lot of hard work went into this release. Check out the changelog.

Spring 2 Book Finally Released

My latest book named Beginning Spring Framework 2 has finally been released. I coauthored this book with Thomas Van de Velde, Christian Dupuis, Sing Li, Anne Horton and Naveen Balani. Check it out ;-).

Apache ServiceMix @ JavaPolis 2007

Last week I was in Antwerp, Belgium to speak at JavaPolis 2007 about Apache ServiceMix. There were loads of good presentations and tons of people. This year JavaPolis set a new record for attends as there over 3200! And let me tell you, the place was packed! Yet another wonderful conference this year. Stephan and his team really do a fabulous job.

I got to meet many new folks and see a number of folks who I don't see that often including Dion and Bob who, oddly enough, both live on the West coast in California, and yet we all traveled half-way around the world before we saw one another. I hung out with my friend Oisín Hurley and his good friend Stephen McNamara and we had some wonderful dinners and spent some good time together.

I really enjoy Belgium and The Netherlands any time of year. It was cold and very damp but I still find that area of the world very intriguing. There is so much ornate architecture, artwork and extremely old buildings to be seen that are rich in history. This is very different from most of the U.S. because the U.S. is fairly young relatively speaking.

The Cult in Denver, CO

Chris and I saw The Cult on Monday night at the Fillmore in Denver. I've seen them numerous times over the years and I've always been a very big fan. They played a number of older songs which was cool, but they also only played for about 75 mintues. We both found this kinda odd.

The new album is called Born Into This and is quite good, both lyrically and musically. It really stabs at life today as being quite gluttonous, eluding to the fact that the world culture has lost its way. In fact, during the show they played the video below for one of their latest songs.



The video includes footage of demonstrations and police crackdown in Burma but evidently the song is about rampant consumerism. Reading the lyrics makes this a bit clearer.

It was good to see them again, but for some reason the show wasn't that long and the entire band seemed to leave the stage in anger - who knows. I still like The Cult ;-).

Sun's Appalling Behavior With OpenDS

Recently it came to my attention that Sun has exhibited yet another set of appalling behavior on one it's so-called <quote>open source projects</quote>. IMO, anything Sun has released as open source that only contains Sun folks is always suspect. This particular episode is quite egregious and really demonstrates Sun's lack of understanding of how open source works.

Without rehashing the details, I'll just provide a link to Dave Shields' blog entry about this particular occurrence which is aptly titled OpenDS: On Being Bitten By The Hand That Once Fed You. David also links to the An Open Letter to the OpenDS Community and to Sun Microsystems that details the real story.

I really feel for the guys on the project who tried to do the right thing as the situation that Sun forced on them really does suck. This is a good demonstration of how big companies ruin open source projects.