Upstart JBoss Group will on Monday debut a new release of its popular open-source application server software amid a growing dispute with Sun Microsystems over Java standard compliance.
Update: Preview of Java 1.5, at Slashdot.
Clash Over Java Standard Heats Up
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to: JNJEE
JBoss’s Not J2EE.
J2EE is created for the big boys to make big dollars off the big companies.
In Sun’s mind, that horrible little upstart JBoss has to go. They offer low cost software, something that Sun, IBM, BEA, etc., do not offer. Basically having a JBoss around is bad for Sun’s Enterprise Java business model.
I’m sure we will see Sun take JBoss to court. What other options are there? Be open and fair to them? That’s not part of Sun culture.
Well if there are standards people should stick to them and not lie that their software is complient with standards if it is not. Standards are here for good reason. If there are solutions with bad support for standards that just makest it hard for all. Portability and interoperability are very important for all. So I have to agree with Sun here. And if I’m not mistaken JBoss could work together with sun to alter the specs and all would be OK.
Sun does not make any open standards. The J2EE tests are not available unless you pay big bucks. You cannot use them to certify your product unless you pay fees to Sun. You cannot logo your product as “J2EE” unless you pay fees to Sun.
J2EE is not a standard. Yes, you heard me. It is not a standard. Tell me what international standards group has ratified J2EE as a standard. Same with that other hypocritical platform, Java. Nothing that Sun makes themselves is an open standard.
So maybe if Sun would stop being the world’s biggest hypocrite on open standards, companies like JBoss would have a chance. But Sun only uses “open standards” as marketing hype, not as a way of doing business. You can see from the JBoss situation, Sun is trying to use their proprietary “standard” to crush JBoss.
And there are people who actually want Sun to get involved with Linux. Think SCO but 100 times worse.
If it doesn’t match the standard it doesn’t match the standard. It gets no easier than that. Even though Sun does have a valid complaint against JBoss claiming compatibility, it doesn’t make my concerns about Java being a proprietory standard go away.
Please all move to .NET:
http://www.ecma-international.org/news/ECMA%20ISO%20CSharp~…
ISO/IEC finishes fast-track standardization of ECMA standards for C# programming language and Common Language Infrastructure
For the OSS enthusiast:
http://www.go-mono.com
For the commercial software enthusiast:
http://www.microsoft.com/net/
Puh-leez, you’ve been reading too many John Carroll articles. Mono and other open-source implementations are based on a subset of Microsoft’s CLR. MS isn’t going to give away the store, they want you to come home to Windows. With Java, you at least have a choice of different servers and IDEs that are guaranteed to support J2EE, which you can run on whatever platform you choose. And choice is the operative word here. With .NET, you can choose Microsoft’s full implementation of CLR, or you can choose Miguel’s Folly– er, I mean, Mono, or DotGNU. But why would you invest in a platform that’s really at the mercy of Redmond?
I will use .NET only if the application is to stay on Windows and be forever shackled to Windows. Other than that it is Java.
The Linux stuff is cool but they will always be playing catch-up to MS when MS changes stuff. Why would I want to be hampered by that?
As far as JBoss is concerned, if they haven’t passed the J2EE test from Sun then they can’t claim J2EE compliance. That is all she wrote!
It seems utterly ridiculous and tremendously naive for the same people that spend most of their effort complaining about how heavy handed M$ has been with their business practices to say I am really thinking about using Microsoft products such as C#. Yes, C# is a product that Microsoft will use to increase vendor lock-in.
M$ maintains a number of the patents on C#. They have told the world that they may use them in the “future”. Any other implementation from any other vendor is always going to be a second class citizen and under the spector of possible legal action by M$(look at the SCO fiasco, whether its true or not). Besides the compatibility is never going to be 100% since Microsoft has not released the Winforms etc components to the public.
I know that most of the folks who read this site are just geeks. But, realize that M$ is a business(and a monopoly at that). The decision by M$ to develop and promote .Net has nothing to do with technology but is all about increasing market share and locking out all other vendors. Why do you think that IBM, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Apple, SAP, etc. have largely ignored .Net. I am not saying that they are ignoring interoperability, but they realize that it would be futile to compete with M$ on a platform that they are hell bent on controlling.
Sun, to its credit, has helped create an industry around Java. Companies such as BEA, Sitraka, Tibco, etc. have flourished because of Sun’s openness with java. IBM has found new life in large part becuase of the Linux/Java combo. that it has promoted successfully.
If JBoss is not compiant with J2EE then they shouldn’t be selling themselves as being J2EE compaint. Sun, like Microsoft, IBM, etc, has a right to try and make some money off of their inventions. Although, I think they should make some allowances to JBOSS. But it seems that they have gone as far as they should to be a good citizen. It is now up to JBOSS to do its part.
On the other hand every company, that does business with M$ is just a stepchild that will be crushed as soon as they get out of line. You don’t have to look far the bodies are everywhere.
Anyone, who chooses to develop apps on .Net(or Mono) might as well just go all M$ because eventually that is where M$ will drive you. The only reason that M$ tolerates Mono is because it gives them enough wiggle room to say that the whole .Net platform is not proprietary. Anyone who looks closely will see that this is a scam.
So be a fool and develop on .Net or stand up for an open computing environment and choose something else whether that is Java, Python, etc. Regardless you have to be a sucker in every sense of word to think that developing on .Net will still afford you the same choice and freedom that you get with Java.
[quote]The Linux stuff is cool but they will always be playing catch-up to MS when MS changes stuff. Why would I want to be hampered by that?[/quote]
Isn’t it the same with the opensource/lowcost/non-bigplayer Java VMs?
there are many technologies which are videly used, but are not committed to any standards commity. such as java, vcr etc.
i’ve never read something more stupid than: C# is an ECMA standard, so lets move to C#. it is plainly stupid. the reason is: Standards does not guarantee anything. there are many technologies that are part of standards body, completely bastardized by MS, such as Kerberos. Another reason: MS may choose to not commit the future versions of C# to the standards commitee. whats gonna happen than? in short, standarts are useful only when the players are honest. MS has never been honest.
i will not move to .NET, and actually, there is nobody moving to .NET around here for the following basic reasons:
1. Java works. there is nothing .net can do and java cannot.
2. Java is available on all the platforms. .NET is not. it is certainly not cross platform compatible.
3. Java technology is supported by all the big it firms, and hw firms (mobile, card, etc.). .NET is supported by MS. Mono is worthless, since it is unreliable, it is not professional, and there is no commercial support behind it except for Ximian, and Ximian is the company supporting it finantially.
In the end,
J2EE rocks. It is supported greatly and extremely successful although it is not a standard. I think there is nothing in .NET that is submitted to any standards commitee accept for C# language and some other small parts. surely .NET’s web application framework is not submitted to ECMA. so, what is the fuss?
JBoss is fantastic. it is incredibly successful, and i may add it probably one of the most successful open source projects in the history.
Sun is doing well. Of course they will ask for money to label your product as J2EE product. they need to earn money as usual. MS is doing the same thing. Who will label Mono projects? Miguel? ha ha! Who the fuck is Ximian anyway? Just an unsuccessful MS licker.
J2EE is ONE of the AVAILABLE web application frameworks for java. J2EE is not tightly bound to java et all. there are more than 20 web application frameworks for Java. some are open source, some are commercial. go google. even apache has 3 or more.
SO,
1. there is no relation with J2EE and Java’s success. [Actually, J2EE is wildly successfull. go to http://www.javaskyline.com ‘s sever page and see more than 20 J2EE implementations available.]
2. there is no relation with J2EE’s success and if it has a standards body or not. as we have seen, it is proving itself actually.
HENCE, it is completely stupid to say J2EE has no standards body, so lets move to .NET.
How many web application frameworks do exist for .NET? Hmmm? –: ))))
[quote]The Linux stuff is cool but they will always be playing catch-up to MS when MS changes stuff. Why would I want to be hampered by that?[/quote]
Isn’t it the same with the opensource/lowcost/non-bigplayer Java VMs?
There are many Java 1.4.x VM implementations on Linux. Sun, Blackdown, IBM to name a few. These are officially supported. I think there are others. MS on the other hand doesn’t release the .NET runtime for Linux.
IMHO, not everything on Linux has to be open source.
There may be 20 implementations of what Sun calls J2EE. However, to be a certified implementation, you have to pay Sun massive fees.
By making the fee schedule so exorbitant, what Sun has done is to shut out all the small vendors from the J2EE market.
A _real_ open standard is available to all vendors, large and small, rich and poor. J2EE is not a real open standard. It is yet another of Sun’s fake open standards.
J2EE certainly generates revenue, that is for sure. It is by far the most complex piece of middleware ever invented. Of course it is going to generate endless consulting dollars and giant implementation projects.
It’s not a dirty word for Sun to make a Buck.
JBoss isn’t free!
And, Michael, Testing costs Money, it isn’t Free.
JBoss can continue to be a Java Server solution without Claiming J2EE compatilibity.
If JBoss want’s to get into the J2EE market and be certified in the J2EE market then they have to write a check. Tough. They’ve got the money. Write the check.
[q] Isn’t it the same with the opensource/lowcost/non-bigplayer Java VMs?
[A] In a sense yes. But at least there ARE x-platform VM’s that are officially supported that doesn’t hamper Java the language in any way. Not so with Mono. Since they are developing a “competeing” C# implementation off of the ECMA standard, all MS has to do is change everything that isn’t an ECMA standard and poof.
That doesn’t mean that developers will not LIKE the Mono impementation. In fact, I see a lot of GNOME development going that way in the future because of GTK#. I will probably head that way myself. Mono/C# is a good language to program in and adding GTK# in the mix makes things really nice.
“There may be 20 implementations of what Sun calls J2EE. However, to be a certified implementation, you have to pay Sun massive fees.”
Yes, and that is normal. Sun is not a charity. MS is doing the same thing. What will Mono do its a wonder indeed. Besides, you may choose not to certify your implementation. JBoss is not certified, and its still successful. There are other uncertified open source J2EE implementations, which are great, such as openejb. ( http://www.openejb.org ) in the end, you do not have to stick to J2EE. there are many other web application frameworks for java.
“By making the fee schedule so exorbitant, what Sun has done is to shut out all the small vendors from the J2EE market.”
No, the fees are not that collosal. There are small j2ee vendors who are also certified. besides, jboss is NOT small vendor. they have money. the problem was that sun did not want to certify it, since it was open source, and was significantly cheeper than commercial ones. but they let it in the end. if jboss is not j2EE compatible, this is not sun’s problem.
“A _real_ open standard is available to all vendors, large and small, rich and poor. J2EE is not a real open standard. It is yet another of Sun’s fake open standards.”
in the end, it is an open standard. you can get it and implement it. sun may certify it or not. is there an open standard web application framework for .NET? how many?
“J2EE certainly generates revenue, that is for sure. It is by far the most complex piece of middleware ever invented. Of course it is going to generate endless consulting dollars and giant implementation projects.”
it is complex, since the problem domain it is dealing with is complex. it is really for giant web sites with complex applications, such as ebay. even photosig, which is probably the most popular photography site, getting millions of hits everyday, dealing with many photographs is not using EJBs. only servlets are enough.
besides now, there are many rapid application development environments to deal with j2ee’s complexity. for instance sun is working on one called ace, that is automatically able to create 2tier or 3tier j2ee web application, according to your choice. go to sun’s research site and check it out. all the ides have ejb wizards now. so, it is not very complex anymore.
besides, i do not see anything wrong with earning money through consulting? this is how jboss is earning money too.
Wrong address. Here is the one for JoNAS (another open source j2ee implementation):
http://jonas.objectweb.org/
here is the one for openejb:
http://openejb.exolab.org/
[seems like they had a horrible hd crash and recovering. –: ) poor guys.]
C# has been submitted as a standard, .NET has not and never will be.
Java is to C# as J2EE is to .NET
(roughly speaking of course
Who cares if J2EE is not an open standard?
And I don’t think Sun has ever sold it as such.
Really, CTOs/IT Managers may be stupid, but theyre not all f*cking stupid.
JBoss will do just fine whether it has J2EE written on the box (oh wait, there is no box) or not.
People said Linux would never catch on because it wasn’t a real UNIX.. well, it still isn’t a real UNIX, and it will still be around when UNIX, as a trademarked entity, has disappeared from popular computing culture.
It is not unreasonable to consider the possibility that JBoss, should it become a good enough product, will exist in the market, alongside Sun’s J2EE option, as a defacto standard in the Java Enterprise market.
If having a ‘J2EE’ sticker on your box represents real value, it will survive, but Apache did just fine without a ‘HTTP 1.0 compliant’ sticker, and Internet Explorer seems to have done alright by just making up silly sh*t and calling it the way we author web pages if we want them to be viewed by 95% of the people.
The best thing to do is that JBoss should have their own compliancy tests, supplied for free, which any vendor can use to get a ‘JBoss compliant’ tag. I think it would catch on pretty quick.
“No, the fees are not that collosal. There are small j2ee vendors who are also certified. besides, jboss is NOT small vendor. they have money. the problem was that sun did not want to certify it, since it was open source, and was significantly cheeper than commercial ones. but they let it in the end. if jboss is not j2EE compatible, this is not sun’s problem. ”
Pardon me if I’m not reading the above right, but you’re saying that Sun wouldn’t certify JBoss because it’s free (and hence cheaper). Kind of invalidates the ending on that sentence doesn’t it? Hopefully you’ll clarify.
Mike: JBoss isn’t free! … They’ve got the money. Write the check.
JBoss is GPL’ed, so by at least one definition it is free. The JBoss Group makes its money off of support, and such money doesn’t come in large quantities. Usually it is just enough to fund development.
Yes, testing costs money, at least it costs the tester money. In this case the tester would be JBoss running the standard tests. The creation of those tests cost money, but that cost was to the creator of the standards, usually one of the donations to the Java community process, but not always from Sun.
And worse still, JBoss is opensource and the company is making money vs. how SUN is working right now.
Orion is great, however, will they come out with a non-subscription plan? a Computer + OS + Server Software = A nice price? that is what the customer wants. I’ve had a look a what Microsoft has to offer, and SUN could easily sell the product as a bundle (hardware, software and services) and easily undercut what a wintel vendor could provide.
When the WHOLE dot net framework has been fully standardised, then I’ll take an indepth interest in it, but until then I’ll stick with the JCP. Sure, it isn’t perfect, but it is alot better than one company dictating the direction as with the case of dot net.
then there is not a dispute over calling it Java.
The amount of work required to port a standard J2EE app to JBOSS is pretty small, though there are some issues. The again – it can take a bit of work moving between websphere and weblogic, writing the vendor specific deployment descriptors. Even so, since i imagine J2EE is a trademark, JBOSS shouldn’t be using it. I don’t think too many care – people know JBOSS well enough to make their own judgement these days.
JBoss 4, however, really is taking the platform into a new sphere. If you use the AOP based features of jboss4 you have no hope in hell of backporting to a standard j2ee platform. here’s a case where tech’s moving way too fast for any standard to be agreed upon – and some argue that standards that come about this way are a hell of a lot better than those designed by a commitee first.
In this case, for me, the benefits of the new stuff are really too good to refuse. The stuff you’ll be able to do just are not that simple to do without AOP. This is the bleeding edge, though, not necessarily in terms of reliability, but in terms of mindset, the availablility of a big pool of talent to draw from, that sort of thing. But so what? That’s progress. If i was runnign a bank I wouldn’t be porting everything to jboss just yet – i wouldn’t be porting to windows2003 either.
As for myself, I trust JBoss enough to use it straight away. Architecture wise i think JBoss is ahead of the commercial players – it really is one of the most elegent pieces of software i’ve seen. At the end of the day I’ve got JBOSS3 apps running for clients that just keep going – for months/years on end. That’s the end of the story for me. If I want a portable app, I can still not use the new features.
What don’t you understand, if they certify JBoss, then Jboss would become a threat to SUN’s partners. So that they (SUN) don’t wreck their partnerships with a number of J2EE vendors such as Oracle, they come up with excuses for not certifying JBoss. Now, that is not saying that JBoss could compete in the ultra high end J2EE application server market, however, ultimately, it will hurt their low end sales of which Oracle has not addressed.
With that being said, you never know what could happen, for example, SAP has teamed up with MySQL to develop a database for small to medium businesses. If SAP see a market for application servers for small to medium businesses, I wouldn’t be surprised if they teamed up with JBoss.
The amount of work required to port a standard J2EE app to JBOSS is pretty small, though there are some issues. The again – it can take a bit of work moving between websphere and weblogic, writing the vendor specific deployment descriptors. Even so, since i imagine J2EE is a trademark, JBOSS shouldn’t be using it. I don’t think too many care – people know JBOSS well enough to make their own judgement these days.
Any re-coding is unacceptable. The deployment descriptors I can understand. That’s reasonable because a specific descriptor format is not part of the spec. It’s simply understood that it will be different on various platforms. But if I have to re-code to use a platform then I hope Sun sues the heck out of them if they try to use the J2EE label.
JBoss 4, however, really is taking the platform into a new sphere. If you use the AOP based features of jboss4 you have no hope in hell of backporting to a standard j2ee platform. here’s a case where tech’s moving way too fast for any standard to be agreed upon – and some argue that standards that come about this way are a hell of a lot better than those designed by a commitee first.
I disagree. It’s always good to try things. But one reason the JCP is useful is because there is a tendency to go with “what’s already there” as opposed to “what is best.” A commitee can often avoid that.
As for myself, I trust JBoss enough to use it straight away. Architecture wise i think JBoss is ahead of the commercial players – it really is one of the most elegent pieces of software i’ve seen. At the end of the day I’ve got JBOSS3 apps running for clients that just keep going – for months/years on end. That’s the end of the story for me. If I want a portable app, I can still not use the new features.
I’ll wait until rev 2 or 3. XSLT was really cool when it came out. But you couldn’t use it – it was too slow. Translets have apparently solved that problem but they were a long time in coming. I’ll let others bleed until a tech is usable.
Just out of curiousity, does IBM, SUN and a number of other Java players work together? it they don’t, why not? why duplicate the R&D effort when the combining of all the Java related R&D under a single banner, say, “Java R&D” would provide a better way of moving forward rather than having hundreds of companies trying to compete and get their “solution” when working together towards a common goal would be more efficient.
If you develop a big BEA app, you will have a hard time porting it to any other “J2EE” platform.
The same goes for Websphere. Or Oracle. It’s great to have some standard pieces, but in the end, there are many places where you have to write your app for the SPECIFIC J2EE platform that you are running on.
The same goes for JBoss. But because JBoss is free, Sun doesn’t want JBoss to be able to use the term ‘J2EE’ without extorting lots of money out of them. IBM, Oracle, BEA and the other big players have paid up. They are part of the ‘expensive software’ club. Sun does not want any sort of low-priced software vendor to come into the picture. Sun is afraid of anything in the Sun/Solaris world that offers price/performance for we certainly know Sun doesn’t.
I would add two things to that:
1) you don’t have to use them – they’re just “nice to have”
2) when they do exist they are in areas not covered by the J2EE spec
As far as being required to write an app that is not cross-platform, I just haven’t seen it.
But if the spec no longer matters then you will get to throw that statement, “It’s great to have some standard pieces” out the window. If a standard or spec can’t be enforced (at least as far as saying you meet the spec) then it’s irrelevant.
Sun is absolutely doing the right thing.
And you’re right Sun wants to make money on this. Absolutely everything about Java is free to developers. Sun *must* make money on J2EE. As someone else repeated before me, Sun is not a charity.
[quote]Michael wrote:
J2EE is not a standard. Yes, you heard me. It is not a standard. Tell me what international standards group has ratified J2EE as a standard. Same with that other hypocritical platform, Java. Nothing that Sun makes themselves is an open standard.[/quote]
Roughly speaking, a standard is a commonly accepted practice or rule. You don’t need a standards group to make something a standard. For example, in my office we have standards for formatting C code which all programmers have to follow. We have standards which indicate how changes are to be handled and how each project is to elect a program manager, etc. As another example, PDF files are a de-facto-standard for information exchange and it was not ratified by any standards group. Therefore J2EE is a standard if it explicates a set of APIs that programmers have to implement.
Roughly speaking, a standard is a commonly accepted practice or rule. You don’t need a standards group to make something a standard. For example, in my office we have standards for formatting C code which all programmers have to follow. We have standards which indicate how changes are to be handled and how each project is to elect a program manager, etc. As another example, PDF files are a de-facto-standard for information exchange and it was not ratified by any standards group. Therefore J2EE is a standard if it explicates a set of APIs that programmers have to implement.
Also, the full source code for Java is available for download. It is the FULL version of Java, not the half-assed POS Microsoft posted on their site which is missing 70% of the stuff which is found in the Windows version.
As for standards, a standard is something that has been standardised by either by a comittee, organisation or by the industry. For example, Java 2 1.4 Language and Framework is a standard. It has been documented and available for anyone who wishes to implement the standard.
.NET has NOT been standardised. It’s language, C# has, and if one wishes, one could create a completely different framework using C# or one could try to re-implement the .NET framework, which ISN’T openstandards.
“If you develop a big BEA app, you will have a hard time porting it to any other “J2EE” platform.
The same goes for Websphere. Or Oracle. It’s great to have some standard pieces, but in the end, there are many places where you have to write your app for the SPECIFIC J2EE platform that you are running on.”
wrong. i did many projects dealing with EJBs. it takes one or two days to migrate an implementation written for one j2ee container to another. i NEVER had to rewrite parts of the application. with the new version of j2ee, the parts that you should change (generally description files) while migrating is even less.
“The same goes for JBoss. But because JBoss is free, Sun doesn’t want JBoss to be able to use the term ‘J2EE’ without extorting lots of money out of them. IBM, Oracle, BEA and the other big players have paid up. They are part of the ‘expensive software’ club. Sun does not want any sort of low-priced software vendor to come into the picture. Sun is afraid of anything in the Sun/Solaris world that offers price/performance for we certainly know Sun doesn’t.”
completely wrong. jboss is not a small company. they have money. they can pay sun’s fee easily. thats not the problem. if jboss is not successful in sun’s j2ee compatibility tests, its not sun’s problem.
Totally agree with Mike
—-
on opensource implementation of .NET:
Mono is *very* good and impressive
— but it just a subset of entire .NET,
since MS didn’t open all the specs.
As a result, you can’t expect Mono as a cross-platform solution for .NET, esp for a large/complex app.
—-
on “standard”:
for me, if a group of ppl had agree on some rules, and everybody play in that rules
— well, i call it “standard”
(de facto or any, you name it)