JBoss credits growth to founder's departure

Marc Fleury's oversised ego stood in the way of partnerships, according to JBoss vice president - product management.

The departure of JBoss founder Marc Fleury is allowing the Red Hat subsidiary to build partnerships that it was unable to do under its eccentric founder.

"Marc was a lightning rod," Shaun Connolly, vice president of product management at JBoss, told www.vnunet.com in an interview at the Red Hat Summit in San Diego.

"People may have been hesitant to approach us in the past because of that, who have been absolutely reaching out to us now to figure out how we can work more closely," he said.

Connolly pointed out that relations with Apache and Eclipse have warmed up significantly since Fleury stepped back, as have those with the community behind Sun Microsystems' Glassfish and Groovy, an object oriented language that offers an alternative to the Java platform.

The Jboss.org website, which caters towards developers who contribute to the software, has been stripped of all corporate logos to further promote partnerships with other open source projects.

Fleury sold JBoss to Red Hat for $420m in June 2006. The Frenchman is known for being short-fused and outspoken and did not fit well in Red Hat's culture.

He went on paternity leave last December, and announced earlier this year that he would not return.

Fleury was successful in starting up the company, but was not the right man to lead it after the acquisition by Red Hat, according to Connolly.

"JBoss would not have been where we are today if we hadn't had his sound bites out there in a very quotable fashion," he said.

"But being part of Red Hat, there is a different personality and relationship with the enterprise that we sell into."