CORBA and Open Source

by

Dare Obasanjo

Being a distributed computing junkie and a strong believer in Open Source software and Linux in particular I have been often surprised by the disdain that Open Source hackers have for using component technologies and distributed computing. When Miguel De Icaza correctly pointed out that *nix is long overdue for a unified component architure similar to what has been available for Windows for almost the past decade, he was met with derision by most people who responded to the story on Slashdot.

Interestingly, when I posted my experiences with component technologies on Windows to that thread it was favorably received which made me wonder if people actually realized what comprised distributed object/component technologies. For this reason I thought it would be useful to provide some of the readers of K5 with a paper a friend and I wrote on distributed technologies which briefly explains CORBA, DCOM, and Java-RMI with code examples. Here's the paper. The paper references material from both the Java Tutorial site as well as the CORBA website. I wrote the parts on CORBA and RMI while my friend wrote the DCOM section.

The rest of my comments are directed at developers who contrary to popular belief use CORBA to build successful, large-scale, distributed applications. Here's my question:Why do you think CORBA is not used more in Open Source software? I have tried to come up with reasons for the lack of enthusiasm amongst Open Source developers for CORBA, and have come up with the following answers:

Are my reasons correct and does anyone think anything can be done to reverse the current trend in Open Source software to shy away from CORBA and other distributed/compnent technologies?

© 2000 Dare Obasanjo