Lutris Technologies
Encyclopedia
Lutris Technologies, Inc. was an enterprise software and services company based in Santa Cruz, California
. The company was privately held, with investors including Chase Capital Partners, Chase H&Q
, TransCosmos USA, and the Intel 64 Fund.http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2000_June_28/ai_63020205
Lutris was founded by a couple of ex-employees of The Santa Cruz Operation in or about 1995, initially under the name of IRI (Information Refinery, Inc). The main business of the company was building bespoke high-end web sites using Java. To facilitate the design and implementation of these web sites, the company built a general purpose application server and XML manipulation tool: XMLC and Enhydra Server.
Enhydra Server is a Java Platform, Standard Edition
(Java SE) application server
that was used on most Lutris-developed sites (including the flagship Customatix
project). In January 1999 Lutris open-sourced Enhydra Server and created a community of related projects.
In October 1999, Lutris announced their intention to develop Enhydra Server v4 as an open-source enterprise-grade Java Platform, Enterprise Edition
(Java EE) application server (later to be known as Enhydra Enterprise). There was considerable press interest in whether this was compatible with Sun’s licensing model for Java EE, which was distributed under the Sun Community Source License
(SCSL).
In March 2000, Lutris launched a commercial, boxed Enhydra Server product including support.
In April 2000, Lutris purchased InstantDB (a Java database management system
distributed on a free-for-non-commercial-use basis) and announced their intent to open-source it.
Enhydra Enterprise made its first beta release in April 2001. Shortly after that (June 2001) the InstantDB project was removed from enhydra.org, and Lutris announced that the InstantDB code would not after all be open-sourced.
The Enhydra Enterprise open source repository was shut down in September 2001, with Lutris management citing the Java EE SCSL conditions as the reason, which gave rise to a lot of bad feeling in the open source community. Many community participants migrated to the fledgling JBoss project.
Nearly all Lutris staff were laid off in waves from late 2001 to early 2002. The company continued operation under a new name of Gridion and developed a distributed High Performance Computing (HPC) platform based on trading compute resources. The company was finally wound up sometime in 2005.
, now known as the OW2 Consortium, took over hosting of Enhydra Server and Enhydra Enterprise. In November 2003, Together Teamlosungen EDV-Dienstleistungen GmbH. acquired the copyrights to Enhydra Server and Enhydra Enterprise and released them under the GNU Lesser General Public License
(LGPL).
Santa Cruz, California
Santa Cruz is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, California in the US. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, Santa Cruz had a total population of 59,946...
. The company was privately held, with investors including Chase Capital Partners, Chase H&Q
Hambrecht & Quist
Hambrecht & Quist was an investment bank based in San Francisco, California noted for its focus on the technology and internet sectors. H&Q was founded by William Hambrecht and George Quist in California, 1968....
, TransCosmos USA, and the Intel 64 Fund.http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2000_June_28/ai_63020205
Lutris was founded by a couple of ex-employees of The Santa Cruz Operation in or about 1995, initially under the name of IRI (Information Refinery, Inc). The main business of the company was building bespoke high-end web sites using Java. To facilitate the design and implementation of these web sites, the company built a general purpose application server and XML manipulation tool: XMLC and Enhydra Server.
Enhydra Server is a Java Platform, Standard Edition
Java Platform, Standard Edition
Java Platform, Standard Edition or Java SE is a widely used platform for programming in the Java language. It is the Java Platform used to deploy portable applications for general use...
(Java SE) application server
Application server
An application server is a software framework that provides an environment in which applications can run, no matter what the applications are or what they do...
that was used on most Lutris-developed sites (including the flagship Customatix
Customatix
Customatix was a Santa Cruz, California-based seller of made-to-order footwear launched in May 2000. The parent company, Solemates, Inc., was founded in 1999 by former Adidas executives Dave Ward, Irmi Kreuzer, Mikal Peveto and David Solk....
project). In January 1999 Lutris open-sourced Enhydra Server and created a community of related projects.
In October 1999, Lutris announced their intention to develop Enhydra Server v4 as an open-source enterprise-grade Java Platform, Enterprise Edition
Java Platform, Enterprise Edition
Java Platform, Enterprise Edition or Java EE is widely used platform for server programming in the Java programming language. The Java platform differs from the Java Standard Edition Platform in that it adds libraries which provide functionality to deploy fault-tolerant, distributed, multi-tier...
(Java EE) application server (later to be known as Enhydra Enterprise). There was considerable press interest in whether this was compatible with Sun’s licensing model for Java EE, which was distributed under the Sun Community Source License
Sun Community Source License
The Sun Community Source License is a community source software licensing model designed by Sun Microsystems that covered the J2EE software development kit. Sun introduced the SCSL in 1998 to maintain compatibility within the Java platform and make code available for commercial use...
(SCSL).
In March 2000, Lutris launched a commercial, boxed Enhydra Server product including support.
In April 2000, Lutris purchased InstantDB (a Java database management system
Database management system
A database management system is a software package with computer programs that control the creation, maintenance, and use of a database. It allows organizations to conveniently develop databases for various applications by database administrators and other specialists. A database is an integrated...
distributed on a free-for-non-commercial-use basis) and announced their intent to open-source it.
Enhydra Enterprise made its first beta release in April 2001. Shortly after that (June 2001) the InstantDB project was removed from enhydra.org, and Lutris announced that the InstantDB code would not after all be open-sourced.
The Enhydra Enterprise open source repository was shut down in September 2001, with Lutris management citing the Java EE SCSL conditions as the reason, which gave rise to a lot of bad feeling in the open source community. Many community participants migrated to the fledgling JBoss project.
Nearly all Lutris staff were laid off in waves from late 2001 to early 2002. The company continued operation under a new name of Gridion and developed a distributed High Performance Computing (HPC) platform based on trading compute resources. The company was finally wound up sometime in 2005.
Epilog
In April 2002, ObjectWebObjectWeb
The OW2 Consortium is a not-for-profit, international consortium mainly devoted to producing open source middleware, EAI, e-business, clustering, grid computing. It was founded by INRIA, Groupe Bull, and France Télécom...
, now known as the OW2 Consortium, took over hosting of Enhydra Server and Enhydra Enterprise. In November 2003, Together Teamlosungen EDV-Dienstleistungen GmbH. acquired the copyrights to Enhydra Server and Enhydra Enterprise and released them under the GNU Lesser General Public License
GNU Lesser General Public License
The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License...
(LGPL).