Continuing the trend of Linux as a major J2EE deployment OS, Red Hat today announced that it will ship an integrated Red Hat Enterprise version pre-integrated with BEA Weblogic. Red Hat will also join the ObjectWeb consortium to further develop JOnAS and OpenEJB.

Red Hat is already working via Apache on Tomcat, and also on Eclipse. Their end goal is to create a compelling, enterprise-strength, unencumbered open source Web application environment.

Read Red Hat's New Strategy Focuses on Enabling Web Applications, ObjectWeb's announcement, and the BEA press release.

Floyd, this headline is misleading. If you read the article carefully.

Quote:

Red Hat announced an agreement with BEA Systems to jointly provide an integrated application server solution on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This offers enterprise customers a best-of-breed capability for developing and deploying applications from one of the world's leading commercial software vendors. Thecomplete Red Hat/BEA solution and theEclipse development environment, running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, are available for preview in the LinuxWorld Red Hat booth #763.

All this says is BEA is committed to creating software solutions that deploys to Enterprise Linux and not that Redhat Enterprise would be bundled with BEA

The article does say Eclipse would be bundled which should be reflected in the heading.

Quote:

Eclipse will be included in Red Hat's next Enterprise Linux platform releasefor both server and client-side solutions. Eclipse is an open source software development project dedicated to providing a robust, full-featured, commercial-quality set of tools for the development of applications. The Eclipse Platform is an integrated development environment (IDE) that can be used to create applications as diverse as web sites, embedded Java(TM) programs, C++ programs, and Enterprise JavaBeans(TM). Eclipse has been deployed on Linux and Red Hat is continuing to enhance a true Open Source Eclipse platform with a set of plugins needed for the Enterprise Linux customers. Red Hat has collaborated with other Eclipse members to provide an integrated Linux set of plugin for the Linux platform such as the CDT, rpm and Tomcat plugins.


So the heading should be Eclipse, etc... bundled, BEA committed to support.

Hi Roland, thanks for clarifying. The press release says:

"Under the terms of the agreement, BEA and Red Hat are expanding their partnership to provide leading performance, availability and reliability in a new pre-configured, production-ready solution that will include BEA WebLogic Server™, BEA WebLogic JRockit™, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and cooperative support offerings."

and " The companies are working together to combine BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 with Red Hat Enterprise Linux to deliver ...."

So to me that imply's that either Red Hat enterprise (or a special version of it) will bundle Weblogic on it, not what you said (that BEA will just support it). So bundling is still an accurate term.

I agree that the Eclipse work is important, but that's not new news (it's been reported in the past on other sites). Today, the only 'new' news is that alleged bundling, and the fact that they joined objectweb.

I appreciate your willingness to help,

Floyd

Ok, I think a special version is probably accurate.

Thanks,

This posting was just brought to my attention…

I wanted everyone to know that David Blevins and I, the admins for OpenEJB, have never spoken to Red Hat or ObjectWeb about this consortium. I have no idea where this came from. I hope its just a misprint…

David Blevins and I decided to join the Apache Geronimo J2EE open source project a few weeks ago. This Red Hat deal is news to us. I wish they had spoken to David or I before including OpenEJB in the press release. We would have told them about Geronimo.

Neither David Blevins or I will continue work on OpenEJB, except to support current users. The code will basically be frozen where it is (except for bug fixes) and we will turn our attention to the Apache Geronimo project.

Personally, I have no problem with this Red Hat deal. More power to them. Open source always benefit from healthy competition. OpenEJB is not, however, a part of this effort.

I invite everyone who is interested in the Apache Geronimo project to visit the Apache Web site to find out more about it and Join the project (http://www.apache.org/). We are all very excited about the opportunity to create an open source J2EE project free from commercial influence under the auspices of an organization (i.e. Apache) that is dedicate to true open source development.

There's already a production level J2EE based server out there known as JBoss. Why begin development on a new one?

P.S. I know this subject can be controversial, but let's keep the conversation productive.

> Why begin development on a new one?
>
> P.S. I know this subject can be controversial, but let's keep the conversation
> productive.

1. Sun is reluctant in give them the Compatibility Kit for free. JBoss IS also a commercial group, after all.

2. JBoss is LGPL, not BSD. Many Enterprises aren't comfortable using any GPL-like license, what may be a problem for adoption from them. IBM, for example, uses Apache HTTP Server embedded with it's products. It's because it uses a BSD-like license, that lets anyone do anything with the software, even closing the source code of improvements they may have done. This is impossible with the LGPL, which states that any derivative work must be LGPLed. Maybe someday Geronimo (I hate that name, hope they change it) will be the de facto standard, like Apache's HTTPD. :)
* obs.: LGPL sure have it's place, but in this case I think the BSD license would more advantageous to everyone

3. JBoss Group seems to have some political (and/or economical) issues internally. The credibility of Apache is much stronger, in the OpenSource community AND in the enterprise. Fleury's attitude of "our customers don't care about J2EE Certification" also contributes a lot to their lack of credibility from the enterprise circles. This difference can be seen even among developers. I see a lot controversial comments about JBoss in dev forums, but I can't even remember the last time I found someone complaining about Apache.

As I understood it the difference between GPL and LGPL is that LGPL allows you to close any code based on it but GPL does not.

Can anybody confirm this?

>
> Can anybody confirm this?

No. I'm no License expert, but they do have differences:

From the BSD: "Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met(...)"

From the LGPL: "You may modify your copy or copies (...) and distribute such modifications or work (...) provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
(...) c) You must cause the whole of the work to be licensed at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."

The BSD lets you do whatever you want with the software (some restrictions about the use of its name only). The LGPL is "Lesser" because it lets you distribute closed-source binaries that use the library, but don't modify it, while the GPL does not. But once you modify the code, you must provide source code "at no charge" "under the terms of this License".

More info:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/lgpl-license.php
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php

Tetsuo

\t g\
There's already a production level J2EE based server out there known as JBoss. Why begin development on a new one?
\t g\

Note at the bottom of the Geronimo announcement was the following:

    Announcements:

     Apache Announcement
     Core Developers Network

...plus, the Core Developers Network has the following on their home page (http://www.coredevelopers.net):

"Today, the Apache Software Foundation announced the formation of a project to develop and certify a truly open source J2EE application server. Called Geronimo, it has brought together developers from a wide range of projects related to J2EE technologies, including people from the Apache, Castor, JBoss, MX4J and OpenEJB communities, and is open to all who wish to see a specification-compliant certified J2EE server unencumbered by commercial interests"

"Partners in Core Developers Network were involved in the launch of this project and are amongst the initial committers. We welcome their involvement and are confident that their contributions will help make Geronimo the world-class product people expect from Apache."

This is pure speculation on my part, but couple the info from this thread with the Geronimo info and Core Developer's Network statements, and it sounds like several divergent forces are amassing to create alternatives to JBoss. And it's interesting that both Floyd's post and CDN's website used the word "unencumbered".

     -Mike

Hi Richard,

I think your message was a bit misleading. The fact that you and David do not plan to continue working on OpenEJB anymore does not mean others won't. For me as an outsider there seems to be quite a healthy community still improving your brain-child on http://openejb.sourceforge.net/ with numerous CVS commits every week. That's the beauty of open source: once a (good) software is in the open it will live on as long as there are people who see it fit to their needs. Anyway, good look for your work on Geronimo.

Best regards,
tevo

Oh and yes... Red Hat's announcement was badly worded, implying a connection between ObjectWeb and OpenEJB where AFAIK there is none. The sentence probably wasn't meant to draw this connection I guess.

> not plan to continue working on OpenEJB anymore does not mean others won't.
> For me as an outsider there seems to be quite a healthy community still
> improving your brain-child on http://openejb.sourceforge.net/ with numerous
> CVS commits every week.

I'm heartened by this response, this is just the kind of spirit that we've tried to culture in the OpenEJB community. In fact, all the active OpenEJB code committers support the Geronimo project and are very excited to add our experience and ideas to the mix.

There is a special term for when projects split, "fork", but no term for when they merge together to create one project. If there were such a term, this would be the perfect time to use it. The OpenEJB development effort is moving directly into the genetics of the Apache Geronimo project, which will be hybrid consisting of the best all projects involved have to offer.

We will continue our commitment to users and will accept patches, fix bugs, and issue patch releases as normal. All current OpenEJB users will be undisturbed. The difference being that all major development efforts by the OpenEJB team will take place under the Geronimo project.

We will do our absolute best to provide a clean and easy migration path from OpenEJB to Apache Geronimo. This would optimally be done by plugging in OpenEJB into Geronimo, in which case there would be no work required by users to migrate. As the Geronimo code is still incubating, it's too early to say how this would be done, but as OpenEJB can be plugged into just about anything it should not be a problem.


Best Regards,
David Blevins

Yes, this article is indeed confusing. It came from a typo of the
Red Hat press release and I wish they would comment on it. ObjectWeb's
press release on Red Hat joining the consortium is way more accurate and
can be found on our web site at www.objectweb.org.

Beside from this, we are very happy to see that Apache has finally decided to go for an implementation of J2EE. This will for sure help in the adoption of J2EE by the open source community.

So, welcome to the club!

Christophe
President of the Executive Committee
ObjectWeb Consortium

Its odd, but a couple of the Geronimo committers have sent two or three e-mails to the server side asking them to announce the Geronimo project, but thus far they have not done it. Floyd can you please put the Geronimo announcement up?

Thanks,

Richard Monson-Haefel

I had no idea what the Geronimo project was until I found this link from slashdot :
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=apache-announce&m=106010108316127&w=2

I'd be interested to hear what people think about a certified compliant open source j2ee server from apache.

I didn't see anything about it on the Apache incubator though.

-A

Calm down, Richard. I'm sure you will get your announcement in due time.

Sheesh..

/T

Hi Richard -

I can't speak for floyd, but I haven't seen anything from you guys on the forum moderation list (when you post through the site), or through email. I would love it if you / anyone involved wrote something up on this and posted it / emailed news at theserverside dot com.

If we don't recieve anything from you, then I promise to look into the details (I do see a couple of things on the web) and will put up a post myself.

Dion

This is a great news for ObjectWeb, since they have many good products! Enhydra, JOnAS, C-JDBC, Octopus, etc. I have very good experiences with those products in development and deployment.

Please check out the ObjectWeb Success Stories about OpenUSS for more information:
http://solutions.objectweb.org/stories.html

Regards,
Lofi

Enterprise Java Open Source Architecture (EJOSA)
"Component-based Software Development made easy with Enhydra and JOnAS"
http://ejosa.sourceforge.net

Open University Support System (OpenUSS)
"Open Source J2EE eLearning platform"
http://openuss.sourceforge.net