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A little bird tells me that BEA officially said today what Darryl Taft reported a week ago–that BEA will open-source the framework for its Weblogic Workshop, under the project name “Beehive.”

Workshop is BEA’s effort to Visual-Basic-ize J2EE development. I saw a demo of it during Adam Bosworth’s introduction of Workshop at BEA’s eWorld conference a year ago (the event where I picked up my nifty Scott Dietzen bobble-head). It uses meta-data, like the “properties” box for VB controls, to configure objects within the framework. I thought it was a good idea, but the implementation left a little to be desired.

That, plus the demo was based on “Minority Report” — a Department of Precrime interceptor-routing application. A little too irony-free for my taste, thanks.

Anyway, open-sourcing Workshop’s framework should at least help them pick up some steam in terms of others building Workshop-ready J2EE objects. Or, at least, it might. Maybe. Possibly. Can I shove any more qualifiers on the end of this paragraph?

Or, it could be a sign that BEA is having trouble getting adoption, is tired of spending money on Workshop, and is foisting it off on a volunteer workforce to maintain. But they’d never do something that cynical. Maybe.

Via MobileWhack, I learned of Amaretto, the Python-on-Symbian project. This is, well, way cool.

But what will it mean, really? A scripting language on a somewhat well-established bunch of phones…that have, like, zero penetration in the US, it seems, because of the stupid telcos. And it’s a beta program.

Now, a Python for BREW port could be interesting…

Damn US Air. I had been hoping to go to OSCON in July, and bring along my wife and daughter to Portland for the week (my two sons will be at the ‘rents for a week at that time). But apparently, using freq. flyer miles, you can’t get there from here, because United has blocked out Star Alliance members from flying to Portland for the ENTIRE MONTH OF JULY. Feh.

Since that was sort of driving the whole trip-(it’s too expensive to get my fsking company to pay for a trip to Portland, and even when I tried to use our Web-based Amex travel system to check fares, it couldn’t figure out how to get me from BWI to PDX–it just broke down and cried), that sort of puts the kabosh on the whole thing. Instead, I’ll be in NYC for part of that week, and some lucky left-coast journo will cover the event.

I will still be going to the Apple WWDC and JavaOne (it helps that they’re at the same time and co-located at Moscone). So I’ll try to hook up with all you left-coasters there.

Things were excessively interesting yesterday at Ziff, as my debut column at eWeek.com notes. The only reason that eWeek.com kept updated during the day on Monday was because I slapped up a Wiki, based on sample code from the MacPython distribution (mad props to Jack Jansen), on my personal web host (that would be the server you’re reading this off of). We used the Wiki to provide a common workspace for the folks with no e-mail or VPN access, so they could shovel copy over to the few people who could get onto the content management system.

In the wake of the J2EE 1.4 announcement, and the pronounced “settling” going on at Sun as it restructures itself around the Schwartz regime, a couple of things have become clear about where Schwartz is taking the company’s strategy. And there’s not a whole lot in it that will make the die-hard open-sourcers out there happy.

For one thing, it appears that Schwartz’s answer to the cries for open source Java is free software, as in free beer (not free speech). The platform is free; however, to actually get the pieces that make it work without the requirement for a doctoral degree in software engineering, you’ll need to pay $50 per employee per year.

Then there’s Linux. Schwartz has taken the “we’re more open than Red Hat” tack, claiming that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a proprietary fork of Linux and therefore no more “open” than Solaris. Which, by most informed and neutral accounts, is total bullshit.

Closed is Open. Slavery is Freedom. Stop me if you’ve heard any of this before.

Meanwhile, JBoss and Apache are preparing to make Sun’s “reference implementation” moot. Once Geronimo gets J2EE-certified with its scholarship-funded TCK, then the genie is out of the bottle, and Schwartz won’t even be able to give Java Enterprise System licenses away as JavaOne party favors. Sure, IBM and BEA won’t be able to dominate the market once the airlock is opened, but there won’t be much point in calling the Sun code the “reference implementation” anymore–anything built on the Apache-licensed Geronimo will essentially be pre-blessed as J2EE compatible without the need to license the TCK.

The maneuvering with Microsoft also raises questions about the viability of Sun’s continued support of OpenOffice.org. If Sun incorporates Microsoft IP into StarOffice and the Java Desktop Environment, then it will doubtlessly have to cordon off that work from OpenOffice to avoid open-source license contamination of said Microsoft IP. Which means totally forking StarOffice from the OpenOffice code base.

So, that leaves the open source background strategy at Sun somewhat up the creek sans paddles, boat, or survival rations, doesn’t it? And in the process, it sort of shafts Sun’s own enterprise Java ambitions in the process–by failing to take a leadership role in open source, Sun falls on its own Java sword.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there’s some big plan hatching in Menlo Park that I don’t know about. But I doubt it. And I sincerely doubt that Sun’s positioning of Solaris will stop its bleed-out of OS market share to Linux, as the open-source OS spreads inward from the edges of the enterprise to the core.