[Biojava-dev] Webservices and choise of SOAP software

[Kalle Näslund]

<HI!><

I have been looking a bit at the webservices module in biojava, and it seems
to depend on GLUE ( www.themindelectric.com ).  From a quick look it seems
GLUE is available in two versions, one standard and one pro.
The standard version ( witch is what the biojava webservice code relies 
on as i understand it )
Is free, as in it doesnt cost any money to use, but it comes under its 
own licence,  and its
provided as binaries only.

As BioJava is an opensource project, wouldnt it be better if we relied on
some opensource alternative to GLUE ?

There are several reasons why sticking to opensource alternatives are 
preferable such as

1) By going with binary only solutions you are loosing one of the big 
wins with opensource,
    the possibility to immediately fix bugs, and the possibility to 
actualy change the code so
    it suits your needs.

    If people want things GLUE standard doesnt support then there is no 
other alternative
    but to hope that themindelectric implements it in GLUE pro, and then 
pay for it.

2) Keeping track of several different licences, that limit what you can 
and can not do makes
    it hard for people that want to use biojava in commercial settings 
to figure out what they
    can and cant do.

3) Long time support and future, will themindelectric provide GLUE 
standard under the
    same licence for a long time ? what happens if they dont ?

4) The old saying of sticking the money where the mouth is. If we claim 
biojava is opensource
    and being opensource is good, then it doesnt look that good if we 
rely on lots of closed source
    binary only things.

There are other altenatives to GLUE, personaly i would think AXIS ( 
http://xml.apache.org/axis )
might be a good choice. But, if there are other alternatives aswell.

Mind, this is just my thoughts, what do YOU think ?

mvh ( kind regards or something ) Kalle