Think Spring

It was nice to catch up with many of my ex-colleagues from SpringSource (formerly known as Interface21) at the launch of Spring Exchange in London this week.

Since 2006 the company has grown by what feels like an order of magnitude. The collaborative nature of SpringSource's product development teams with the user community has ensured that Spring adoption continues at the rate hot potatoes sell on a cold winter's day.

I still remember the day Rod Johnson told me about his new company based on open source. Back then, Java open source combined with a business model were a rarity. The key problem was sustainability. For the product developers and most importantly for the product.

Having used a prototype of Spring back in the days when EJB was an emerging technology, Spring for me is a strong example of quality software through collaboration (with both open source and commercial partners) and constant innovation. It represents what a team of brilliant minds can achieve along with the wisdom of the open source crowd.

The next BIG technical conference in London will be QCon in March where you'll get another chance to meet the Spring team. Maybe I'll see you there.