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free oracle? any chance for that also? i like that db and i hate to pay for it.

Yes, it's called Oracle XE, http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/xe/index.html.

The SpringSource lawyers will certainly shut them down.

Interesting to see how fast the community has reacted to SpringSource announce.
However, I don't see how SpringFree will be able to provide such a service without any change in source code: are they going to monitor every single commit to Spring repository, build it and try to discover what it fixes in order to version it correctly? That seems quite a difficult (and error-prone) work; I wonder why they did not choose the fork approach but I'm ok with their choice if it works (I hope it will).

It sound great, It will be hard without tags but it is very possible and I can think that this will Lead Spring development because in this version is where the mindshare will be.

I didn't know they were pulling Spring from the Maven archives until this.
Looks like I'll be shopping for another DI framework

I'm the creator of FreeSpring.org and I'm happy to respond to some of the questions raised here. However, to avoid wasting time, SpringSource has responded to the concerns of the community and they've released an updated maintenance policy.

http://blog.springsource.com/2008/10/07/a-question-of-balance-tuning-the-maintenance-policy/

So what do you think? Is there still a need for FreeSpring.org based on this new policy? Does it address all of your concerns?

Read it carefully and most importantly look for omissions. The most important update is this statement:

"For each version of Spring, community releases will be available while it remains the trunk or until the next version is stable."

There is no statement regarding downloadable binary distributions of those versions, archives of old versions, tags for the version numbers or deployment to the Maven repository. They may indeed offer these services, but they have not made it clear in this particular statement.

So is it enough? What more would you ask of SpringSource?

For those that may be wondering, we are not at odds with SpringSource, and in fact they have not shown any dissent towards FreeSpring.org or made any legal threats. The Apache license affords us a lot in that regard. We respect and are happy to work with SpringSource to help them achieve their goals, without negatively impacting the community. SpringSource has included us in discussions regarding this new policy, and they have representation on our mailing list. We have nothing to hide.

The ideal solution I would like to see is for SpringSource to respond adequately and for FreeSpring.org to be a complete waste of a $12 domain name. :-)

In the event that FreeSpring.org is deemed necessary, then know that we are fully capable of achieving what we've set out on the site. We have donations of a content delivery network for mass distribution of binary builds and possibly even a private maven repository (better than none at all), and also offers of donations of other infrastructure for CI build servers etc.

The Spring community is vast, powerful and capable of fully sustaining such a strategy. I am merely a facilitator in this process. It is really all of you that would make it possible if necessary.

Cheers,
Clinton

(QUOTE) There is no statement regarding downloadable binary distributions of those versions, archives of old versions, tags for the version numbers or deployment to the Maven repository. They may indeed offer these services, but they have not made it clear in this particular statement.

- Archives of binaries for old versions will be available. They're ASL so you can do what you like with them, forever, in any case.
- We will be making community releases available to the Maven repository just as we have done in the past
- We plan to publicly tag community releases

@willcode4beer
We never proposed removing Spring from the Maven repositories. Under the amended policy we will be making community releases regularly of the latest Spring development, and making them available for Maven users as we've always done.

Rod Johnson listen to the Spring community. Go and read his blog, It make sense now.

Thank you Rod. You have done a great job of responding to the concerns of the Spring community. It seems to me that you've covered each of the areas and the community is rallying behind you once again. Congratulations on the continued success of the Spring Framework.

Cheers!

Thanks for the kind words. Let's all get on with improving enterprise Java!

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