SpringSource Announces Acquisition by Microsoft

by Ryan Slobojan on Apr 01, 2008 |

In a surprise announcement, SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson announced that SpringSource has agreed to be acquired by Microsoft. InfoQ interviewed Johnson to learn more about this acquisition and what it will mean for the future of both Spring and the .Net Framework.

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Johnson began by describing the terms of the acquisition - because SpringSource is a private company, full details of the transaction will not be disclosed; however, the purchase amount was greater than the $1 Billion USD that Sun paid for MySQL in January. Johnson also said that the acquisition would result in a change of focus for SpringSource - a greater focus will be placed upon filling out the .Net-based side of the Spring Portfolio, with a .Net-based version of Spring Web Flow becoming the basis for the ASP.Net web development APIs.

Johnson told InfoQ that integration of the Microsoft and SpringSource development teams has already begun:

  • Johnson, Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie are discussing how the Spring Framework can be leveraged to address the historical problem of meeting deadlines at Microsoft by simplifying and modularizing Microsoft's many codebases
  • Christian Dupuis of the Spring IDE team has begun working with the Visual Studio team to integrate the two codebases together
  • Juergen Hoeller is working with the Office team on integration points for the upcoming 2009 release of the Office suite
  • Costin Leau is exploring the creation of an OSGi runtime container for .Net
  • Adrian Colyer is working together with S. Somasegar to plan out future directions and strategies for Microsoft's Developer Division

Johnson also indicated that the Spring Framework would be integrated into the Windows operating system, with users having the ability to configure most settings and applications via associated Spring Beans. When asked whether the next version of Windows (Windows 7) would be called "SpringHorn" Johnson declined to comment - however, he did express excitement about the prospect of Spring being on every Windows installation.

Mark Pollack, founder and lead of the Spring.Net project, added:

Anders Hejlsberg, Erik Meijer and I have had some excellent conversations around where Spring.Net can improve the development process for .Net applications, and we expect to add many of the existing Spring APIs in the .Net Framework 4.0 release. The AOP and Aspect namespaces will likely be added to the System namespace, and the DAO and Data namespaces will augment the existing ADO.Net APIs.

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Community comments

Good April Fool Joke by Praveen Govindan

Ha Ha Ha.. Nice April Fool Joke

1 April Joke - I hope by Vyacheslav Yakovenko

Ha Ha Ha

redhat would have been more believable by Rusty Wright

Or maybe Oracle.

April's fool by Yuri Vrancken

Ha ha ha... SpringHorn... LOL

Desperately Unoriginal by Neil Bartlett

The "open source project acquired by Microsoft" jape has been done to death already! Even Microsoft themselves got in on the act: Sam Ramji "announced" that MS would acquire Eclipse two weeks ago at EclipseCon.

Please, please, let's try to think of some original April Fool jokes.

This is NOT funny ! by Dorel Vaida

Some of us forgot the day. Stop doing this Floyd ! :-D

Re: This is NOT funny ! by Andrea Del Bene

Yes Floyd is not funny..I'm writing from intensive care unit of my local hospital :-)!

Re: This is NOT funny ! by Mihai Campean

Yep, not funny! Lucky I took my heart medication just before reading this :))

Re: This is NOT funny ! by iulian dumitru

Rod seams very serious :D

April Fool !!! by Mittal Bhiogade

Happy April Fools Day !!!

Re: April Fool !!! by Gabi Pop

I might be wrong but I think they recorded this at QCON London in March after the open-doors interview with Rod.

Nice!!! by Jason West

Had me at first glance.... LMAO!

Re: This is NOT funny ! by Floyd Marinescu

Hey guys I had nothing to do with this, it was orchestrated by Ryan Slobojan and Rod Johnson. :)

Re: This is NOT funny ! by Sadek Drobi

Good one Floyd Ryan and Rod :) I beleived it until the question of SpringHorn lol

You're a bad actor Rod!!! by Alexandre de Pellegrin

It sounds like Will Smith announcing Spring 4.0!

SpringJoke 1.0 by Mauricio Aiello

This is the new release of the SpringJoke 1.0 ?.. I think it 'll be tested in the next 100 years, It 's a lot of bugs..

I don't really like this king of joke.

you guys got me :-) by tom fowler

Maybe another sign I am too old for this business...

I was fooled ... suddenly Guice sounded like something I needed
to seriously explore...

Please stop by Jawher Moussa

Guys please stop, this is not funny ... at all !

holly S... by Pedro Trujillano

My god, I should have recorded my face while reading through

I got white as a wall.

it would be more funny by peter lin

if microsoft was actually acquiring SpringSource. That way, it would kill Spring in Java land and make a large percentage of people turn away from it. It would also validate Laddad's work from a .NET perspective. Not that AOP needs .NET approval to be considered valid and useful.

Spring is just a tool. No better and no worse than other tools in Java land. I don't understand why people get so fired up about Spring.

Re: Nice!!! by Jeff Grigg

This is great!!!
(LOL)
Really -- think about all the upsides of this happening. I can hardly wait. ;->

This was extremely cruel! by dustin jacobson

Oh, man!

For those of us developers, that also running in the fast lane of parenthood - it would be a good day if I know what month I'm in, and to know the day of the month - forget it...

My first reaction - I walked away from the computer - did a "WTF", followed by a "How can this be - this just does not make sense".

The above story would be equivalent to re-writing the Star Wars saga and having Luke go to the dark side...

Re: April Fool !!! by Ryan Slobojan

Seeing as how it's now April 2nd, I can indeed confirm that this is an April Fools joke as most of you have guessed. And, Gabi, you are correct - this video is what was recorded after I ended the public segment of Rod Johnson's interview at QCon London a few weeks ago.

Thank you Rod for going along with this idea, and thank you Floyd for giving us clearance to run this - I believe that a good time was had by all. :)

American humour by Daniel Serodio

What's the matter with you american people? Do you actually think these jokes are funny? Geez, reading news on April 1st is a complete waste of time...

Re: American humour by Andrea Del Bene

If you don't like simply don't read it. An by the way how can you define it "American humour"?
Rod's face is so serious, so British, and Rod himself IS British, even if he is Australian-born.

Re: Please stop by Jesper Lidefelt

I agree this is not funny at all...

Whew by John Brinnand

Guys,

You had me going there for a minute. I thought I was in an alternate reality.......!

So - in the end.....the Jedi still exist. They have not been infiltrated by the Empire. All is well...:-)

John

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