 | Level: Introductory Brian Goetz (brian@quiotix.com), Principal Consultant, Quiotix Corp
01 Mar 2002 Java zone columnist Brian Goetz hit this year's JavaOne conference with an agenda: to find out just what was going on with regard to the open source community and the Java language. The news looks pretty good.
For the past year or so, a quarrel has been brewing between Sun and the open source community. At issue is the licensing status of the many Java specifications and recommendations that come out of the Java Community Process (JCP). This week, Sun reached an agreement with the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) to ensure that the open source community would be free to implement Java APIs, and that they would have access to the testing and
compatibility kits required to certify compliance with Java APIs. Java APIs, such as JSP, JAXB, and EJB, are created through the Java Community Process. JCP members include Sun, representatives from other companies (such as BEA, Oracle, and IBM), and other representatives from the community and academia (including the ASF.) For each project or API, a working group is formed, which creates a proposal document and potentially a reference implementation and a test suite. After several rounds of review, commentary, and voting,
the proposal may become a specification. The JCP rules placed some restrictions on the licensing terms associated with the specification, reference implementation, and test suite. In particular, the rules made it impossible for the reference implementation to be released under an open source license, and made it possible for the specification to be released under a license which prohibited open source implementations. Further, there were often fees associated with licensing of the test suites, required for certification. All of these placed legal and financial roadblocks in front of open source developers wishing to implement Java APIs. Past collaborations between the JCP and the open source community have been quite successful -- the Tomcat application server (the reference implementation for the Servlet and JSP specifications) was developed by the ASF under a special exemption to the open source restrictions on JCP specifications. But in recent months, tensions between Sun and the open source world have increased. In February, prior to a vote on revisions of the JCP rules, Apache issued a position statement outlining its demands for changes in the JCP (see Resources). Apache demanded that JCP rules be amended such that:
- Open source groups are free to implement Java APIs and release them under the terms of an open source license
- JCP working group leaders are free to release reference implementations and test suites under an open source license, if they so choose
- JCP working group leaders are permitted to make discussions and drafts public prior to formal review, if they so choose
- Open source groups, nonprofit organizations, and academic institutions can gain access to test suites at no charge
Fortunately, all was resolved favorably, and Sun, in a letter of intent released this week (see Resources), agreed to all of Apache's requirements. Sun went further, creating a $3 million "scholarship fund" to provide financial resources for open source, nonprofit, and academic groups to pay the licensing fees for compatibility test suites and the costs of certification for "qualified efforts." What constitutes a qualified effort will be determined by an independent three-member board. Sun has also agreed to modify the specification licenses for all JSRs currently in the JCP process, and for some previously completed specifications as well. These welcome developments open the door to the possibility of J2EE certification for JBoss, the popular open source J2EE container. Until recently, it was widely believed that no open source application server would receive J2EE
certification. JBoss garnered quite a bit of attention for itself at JavaOne, despite the fact that no JBoss sessions or BOFs were scheduled on the JavaOne calendar. JBoss was named "Best Java Application Server" at the JavaWorld Editors' Choice Awards, held on Monday night at the Thirsty Bear Brewing Company. Also this week at the Thirsty Bear, the JBoss folks held their own conference (free, of course) dubbed JBossOne, with 16 sessions over the course of two days covering JBoss internals, future enhancements, and legal issues for open source projects (see Resources). In the past year, JBoss has come from being an interesting project to being a serious competitor to commercial J2EE application servers. With over 120,000 downloads last month, it should be clear that a lot of folks are at least taking a serious look at open source J2EE alternatives. The current version, 2.4.4, includes support for all of the J2EE services required by the J2EE specification, version 1.3, including EJB, JTS/JTA, JMS, JDBC pooling, and JSP. The next version, 3.0, will include full EJB 2.0-compliant CMP (container managed persistence), EJB-QL, clustering, and fail-over. |
Products "Built on NetBeans"
Products built on NetBeans technology include:
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RefactorIT, from Aqris Development, a refactoring plug-in for NetBeans that simplifies the refactoring of Java code
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Cittera, from CanyonBlue, a UML modeling tool
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JReport Designer, from JInfonet, a GUI report designer and layout manager that simplifies the process of building reports based on SQL data
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JTagstudio, from Virtuas, a JSP editor and custom tag builder
See Resources for more information.
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Sun further demonstrated its committment to the value of open source software by showcasing solutions built on top of the
NetBeans platform. NetBeans is an open source Java IDE and extensible Java application framework, and is the basis for Sun's Forte tool
chain. The "Built on NetBeans" logos were everywhere, with over 30 companies showcasing products that are built on top of or integrated
with NetBeans. The relationship between NetBeans and Forte (and all the other commercial products built on NetBeans) demonstrates how well
open source efforts and commercial software companies can work together. In other open source news, the widely used JavaCC parser generator tool (see Resources) has finally been released under an open source license. It was originally developed at Sun, and later maintained and released as free but closed-source software by its original developers as they moved from Sun to Metamata to Webgain. The product has been donated back to Sun with the support of Webgain and JavaCC's authors, Sriram Sankar
and Sreeni Viswanadha. Sun will steward the project and release it as an open source tool, likely as part of the NetBeans project. All in all, 2002 is shaping up to be a good year for the open source Java community.
Resources - Find out which technologies took the gold in this year's JavaWorld
Editors' Choice Awards.
- Read Apache's demands for changes in the JCP, penned by Jason Hunter. And read Jason's account of the situation in his Weblog from Servlets.com.
- Read Sun's letter
of intent, which met all of Apache's requirements, plus some.
- Read about JavaCC's move to WebGain.
- You can see the full list of companies demonstrating products
built on Netbeans in this press release. Find out more information about the products mentioned here:
- Find hundreds of Java resources on the developerWorks
Java technology zone.
About the author | | | Brian Goetz is a software consultant and has been a professional software developer for the past 15 years. He is a Principal Consultant at Quiotix, a software development and consulting firm located in Los Altos, CA. See Brian's published and upcoming articles in popular industry publications. |
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