This week Sun launched Glassfish Portfolio, a Java application server platform and more based on the open source Glassfish. In fact, everything in the platform is open source save the Enterprise Manager that makes it easy to run the thing, which may itself be open sourced in time. You pay $999 per seat for support services, which of course is just how the open source folks always said open source would make money. Other things tucked in include Apache, MySQL (naturally, it being Sun’s other big open source offering), and Perl/Python/PHP, making it a good *AMP platform. You can install Glassfish Portfolio on Linux to make it LAMP, of course, though that’s not how it comes out of the box; nevertheless, Sun is using the word “LAMP” in its marketing efforts, which has irritated some Linux advocates. They’ve got a point, seeing as the big sell for the product is that the open source components, which you could theoretically download and piece together on your own for free, have been neatly integrated for you, while you have to integrate the stack with the OS yourself.But why be a negative nelly? Sun has come out with something that is (a) based on Java and (b) might actually make some money. It probably isn’t going to unseat WebLogic or WebSphere any time soon, but, as analyst Andrew Binstock notes, it’s almost certainly gunning for JBoss. (Sun’s Sekhar Vajjhala has a Glassfish migration blog that seems to focus on JBoss as a migration target.) InformationWeek’s Serdar Yegulalp said, “Sun’s GlassFish stack is, in a way, Sun at its best: creating infrastructures around and powered by its star product, Java.” If Glassfish takes off, that star might actually help its creator stay profitable. Software Development