In this interview, Floyd Marinescu of TheServerSide.com/The Middleware Company interviews Bill Shannon and Karen Tegan about J2EE, the CTS and recent controversial events surrounding J2EE. Bill is a Sun Distinguished Engineer and Spec Lead for the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition. Karen is Director of J2EE Compatibility and Platform Services for Sun Microsystems.

Read Interview Here

Floyd,

Good interview - though it seems like they gave the usual sort of wishy-washy answer regarding open source.


Cheers
Ray

Thanks Ray. Bill and Karen provided a lot of really good answers. Of course the open source issue is delicate, I congragulate them for answering it though.

Floyd

They absolutely did provide a lot of very good answers. And you make a good point - given the politics of the situation the fact that they gave an answer is good, and certainly a start!

Cheers
Ray

Floyd,

Well, they didn't really answer it, now did they. You, I, all of us know what the real issue is, but they twisted it to mean something rather different and chose to answer that. A non-answer. Which I have complete understanding of, but let's not pretend that it was something else.

/Rickard

I think this two sentences is absolute marvelous:

First the say:
"Sun participates in open source because it helps spark innovation, improve software quality, and fosters community"

And then 5 lines below:
"The J2EE Compatible brand has achieved significant momentum over the past two years, and we want to make sure that any open source efforts don't impact the viability of that effort."

What the **** do the think of Open Source.... :( If any Open Source product would pass the test successfully then the J2EE Compatible brand would loose it's meaning... because it is only comercial company that has the money and knowledge to be able to make a product of high quality and correctness ????

/Lennart

Lennart,
  You are taking it a bit out of context, that was 2 different people's responses there. You make it seem like the same person said that (which is false).

-Chris

Right on Rickard. I don't see why everybody's standing around applauding Sun here. If they gave an "answer" to the issue of J2EE licensing for Open Source, it sure slipped by me. I have to say I am almost never disappointed by Microsoft because they always give the kinds of responses I expect from them. However, Sun continually disappoints because you want them to be so much better and they're not really. As for Open Source, they pay it lip service, and use it when it suits their needs, but at the first sign where it might cut down on their making half a buck or God forbid, giving up some "control," they're nowhere to be found. I personally haven't participated in the Java Community Process, but I'm betting there's one vote that counts, Sun's.

"What the **** do the think of Open Source.... :( If any Open Source product would pass the test successfully then the J2EE Compatible brand would loose it's meaning... because it is only comercial company that has the money and knowledge to be able to make a product of high quality and correctness ????"

Oh Sun loves Open Source, just not when it happens to compete with a proprietary product they are promoting. Witness their support of Tomcat.

Sun's in an ironic position where they control the J2EE spec, but have yet to offer a market-leading web app server implementation. We'll see what happens with their re-write of iPlanet, but the last time I looked it hadn't changed much since the days they paid Netscape too much money for it. As for the dysfunctional J2EE family, there's already enough bad blood between Sun and BEA and IBM. Add JBoss to the mixture, and it's all they can do to keep up an appearance of unity against .NET.

I'm not sure why people draw the concolusion that because they have stewardship of the standard that they have to have the most awesome implementation on the planet? That's like expecting the coach of a football team to step into the game to make the tie-breaking touchdown pass. Gimme a break.

If you have legitimate problems with how they have handled things up to this point, say so, but saying that they haven't released the best implementation on every known platform is NOT a good reason to say that they don't deserve the position they have. Sheesh.

-Chris

"I'm not sure why people draw the concolusion that because they have stewardship of the standard that they have to have the most awesome implementation on the planet? That's like expecting the coach of a football team to step into the game to make the tie-breaking touchdown pass."

I think the more appropriate analogy would be if the rules organization for an athletic conference was also the owner of one of the competing teams in the conference.

The issue is not the quality (or lack thereof) of iPlanet. The issue is how Sun handles the conflicting interests of their stewardship of J2EE and their desire to promote their own product.

There is nothing of interest to be said about the J2EE Compatibility Test Suite. No doubt it's a process that's about as exciting as filling out a tax return, a tedious and bureaucratic time and money sink that most vendors simply regard as the cost of doing business. However, let's call a spade a spade. Who is allowed to take this test suite has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with technical compatibility.

I would agree. When you read:

Tegan: At the same time, having a strong brand and compatibility standards are important to the development of a robust market for J2EE platform products, tools, and components. The J2EE Compatible brand has achieved significant momentum over the past two years, and we want to make sure that any open source efforts don't impact the viability of that effort.

I would draw the conclusion that you would want to encourage open source vendors to be certified...or the growth of a "non-certified" product weakens the viability or value of the brand. If a large number of people use JBoss and it continues to gain momentum, it says that people don't put as much value in the brand as they do in either: open source, low/free price, or just solid implementations that "work" or are "certified" by running the apps you build.

Rickard,

  What I meant by 'at least they answered it' is that they had the integrity to address the question (on some level anyway) and thus risked putting themselves in the cross fire of TSS members (which they did).

They could have easily not answered the question and it would not have made it in the published interview, and then no one would be complaining on this thread. :) Thats why I congragulate Karen and Bill.

Floyd

Floyd,

Point taken, and I agree. That was a non-trivial one to answer, at all. God I'd like to be a fly on the wall when they do that one internally... ah well, one step at a time.

/Rickard

Very good article. The answers and the insights they provided about the process, I thought to be very interesting.

I found one quote very interesting:

Tegan: At the same time, having a strong brand and compatibility standards are important to the development of a robust market for J2EE platform products, tools, and components. The J2EE Compatible brand has achieved significant momentum over the past two years, and we want to make sure that any open source efforts don't impact the viability of that effort.

What does this imply if JBoss does become a "BEA Beater"?

"What does this imply if JBoss does become a "BEA Beater"? "

That their certification is essentially meaningless.

I bet our occasional Microsoft visitors are enjoying watching Sun squirm on this one. "We love Open Source, but..." How Sun suckers people into paying for a legacy piece of crap like iPlanet today, given the alternative of Weblogic and Websphere is a mystery to me (of course never underestimate the stupidity of senior management that sign up for strategic "alliances" without ever listening to their engineers evaluation of the partner's product). It's no surprise Sun's not rushing out to embrace JBoss.

"What does this imply if JBoss does become a "BEA Beater"? "

That their certification is essentially meaningless.

I bet our occasional Microsoft visitors are enjoying watching Sun squirm on this one. "We love Open Source, but..." How Sun suckers people into paying for a legacy piece of crap like iPlanet today, given the alternative of Weblogic and Websphere is a mystery to me (of course never underestimate the stupidity of senior management that sign up for strategic "alliances" without ever listening to their engineers evaluation of the partner's product). It's no surprise Sun's not rushing out to embrace JBoss.

it is very good!It is usefull to us,i think so!

How about we all throw some money in a hat and get JBoss certified? I wonder what the price was that Sun quoted JBoss. :-)

I'd throw money into that hat.

Then again, we could always start an open source J2EE compatibility test suite... they pretty much give the requirements in interview:

- test api and signature
- test end to end
- ensure that there are tests for every "must," "will," and "is required to" in the docs...

New certification could be the "Independent Java Enterprise Compatibility Test Suite".

course, writing 15000 of them could become a little repetitive.