Joseph Ottinger was the Editor-in-Chief of JDJ and resigned a few weeks ago. "I resigned from JDJ for a number of reasons, and I'd like to explain why instead of leaving it as a mystery... I quit because I felt that JDJ was an ineffective medium, for non-technical reasons, and showed no signs of strengthening itself."

Read more at http://epesh.blog-city.com/read/645152.htm.

I feel bad for Joseph. It sounds like the ones in trouble are Sys-Con. You can't let advertising dollars dictate your content direction. But you can't let the fashionable feel of the Open Source Software movement dictate your content direction either. I'm not for or against the open source movement, but I feel that all too often the reason people use a product isn't because it's technically *better* but because it's been labeled "Open Source". JBoss, IMHO, is technically better that WebLogic in many areas if not all (no I don't work for JBoss - I just use the server). On the other hand, while I don't think that Eclipse is better than JBuilder (in fact in many ways I think it's anemic compared to JBuilder) I always hear the *same* response from Eclipse users when I ask them why they use it instead of using JBuilder or something like it; "Because Eclipse is Open Source!" I'm worried Alan's point of view on the open source movement is tainting JDJ's direction as a technology magazine and turning it into a "philosophy magazine".

And as far as their compensation plan goes.. A free subscription is kind of a joke when you give them away already.... :-/

On the other hand, while I don't think that Eclipse is better than JBuilder (in fact in many ways I think it's anemic compared to JBuilder) I always hear the *same* response from Eclipse users when I ask them why they use it instead of using JBuilder or something like it; "Because Eclipse is Open Source!"

I'm an Eclipse convert, but that's not my experience at all. Most Eclipse users I know, myself included, use for reasons such as its excellent refactoring capabilities and CVS integration. While the price is obviously good too, the "open-source factor" is scarcely relevant.

- Rob
http://rmlowe.com/

JBoss, IMHO, is technically better that WebLogic in many areas if not all (no I don't work for JBoss - I just use the server).

Can you explain why JBoss in your opinion is technically better than WebLogic ?

JBoss, IMHO, is technically better that WebLogic in many areas if not all (no I don't work for JBoss - I just use the server).

Can you explain why JBoss in your opinion is technically better than WebLogic ?

In my experience working with Weblogic 7, 8, and JBoss - JBoss is faster, easier to manange, has easier to implement clustering, and more reliable hot-deploy features and is far less bug-ridden. The new bugs that get introduced between service packs in WebLogic have brought my projects to a grinding HALT until 'hot-fixes' are made available. While WLS 8 is *better* than 7 (7 is just garbage) I'm still not impressed - especially with licenses starting at 10k/CPU.

And don't get me started about how BAD WebLogic support has gotten.

Of the commercially licensable projects out there - I think Borland Enterprise Server is probably the all-around best product for the money. But JBoss definitely has all of the beat in features vs. cost of ownership.

In my experience working with Weblogic 7, 8, and JBoss - JBoss is faster, easier to manange, has easier to implement clustering, and more reliable hot-deploy features and is far less bug-ridden. The new bugs that get introduced between service packs in WebLogic have brought my projects to a grinding HALT until 'hot-fixes' are made available. While WLS 8 is *better* than 7 (7 is just garbage) I'm still not impressed - especially with licenses starting at 10k/CPU.And don't get me started about how BAD WebLogic support has gotten.Of the commercially licensable projects out there - I think Borland Enterprise Server is probably the all-around best product for the money. But JBoss definitely has all of the beat in features vs. cost of ownership.

Hm, quite strange. Having worked with WebLogic for the past 6 years or so I can only say that it is ridiculously easy to manage (as of version 7.x) has suprisingly few bugs and very powerful and easy to configre clustering. I have looked at the next-to-last major JBoss version and at least its clustering and configuration were clearly inferior. I used Inprise Application Server once (now a long time ago, though :-)) and it was a total desaster. Also from what I see in the commercial market place, BEA has clearly one the best support teams.

David: JBoss definitely has all of the beat in features vs. cost of ownership.

That depends on the size of the project. If you have a single application to deploy to a single server, and it doesn't have much load or uptime requirements, then free (Linux + Apache + Tomcat + JBoss + Postgres) is hard to beat.

As they say, YMMV, but on projects of any size or importance, a stable, scalable and manageable app server pays for itself many times over.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Clustered JCache for Grid Computing!

David: JBoss definitely has all of the beat in features vs. cost of ownership.That depends on the size of the project. If you have a single application to deploy to a single server, and it doesn't have much load or uptime requirements, then free (Linux + Apache + Tomcat + JBoss + Postgres) is hard to beat.As they say, YMMV, but on projects of any size or importance, a stable, scalable and manageable app server pays for itself many times over.Peace,Cameron PurdyTangosol, Inc.Coherence: Clustered JCache for Grid Computing!

All, take Cameron's comments with skeptism as JBossCache competes with Coherence and I know at least one customer we've stolen from him.

We have many paying customers running multiple apps on one JBoss instance and many customers running JBoss within a cluster with VERY HIGH loads and transaction rates to compare to any other commercial applicaiton server. And that is just paying customers... We have competed against and won against other vendors on numerous proposals on performance alone. Contact our sales and marketing department for detailed official information.

Bill

Bill: All, take Cameron's comments with skeptism as JBossCache competes with Coherence and I know at least one customer we've stolen from him.

Bill, it's not "stolen." If someone goes with a different solution, it's called "competition." If you think this is something new, consider that -- for years now -- there have been free and open source solutions (not to mention commercial ones) that provide various caching features, going back to before our Coherence 1.0 release.

As far as taking my comments with skepticism, I would hope that people wouldn't just accept anything that I say as "the truth," anymore than they'd accept what anyone else would say. I'm just posting my opinion from what I've personally witnessed and experienced. I'd be glad to explain to you in private more details of why I hold the technical opinions that I do on JBoss.

Bill: We have many paying customers running multiple apps on one JBoss instance and many customers running JBoss within a cluster with VERY HIGH loads and transaction rates to compare to any other commercial applicaiton server.

Quite possibly, and it does appear that JBoss continues to improve. From my experience, and as I said above, I trust JBoss to work well in a certain type of situation. Since I have experience with real high-scale JBoss deployments (you could say "at least a bit more than two or three servers,") I feel at least qualified to state my own opinion. IMHO: JBoss, while a noble effort and "not bad for free" software, is simply not ready for mission critical software. OTOH, for development purposes and as a cost-effective way to deploy a single application that is not mission critical, it seems to be fine.

Bill: We have competed against and won against other vendors on numerous proposals on performance alone. Contact our sales and marketing department for detailed official information.

Congratulations -- honestly. I know you guys are working on performance issues; in fact, you (personally, IIRC) very quickly responded to a little one that I pointed out a while back. I look forward to seeing SPECjAppServer2004 results for JBoss, in addition to the J2EE certification.

Bill, there's a big difference between saying "JBoss sucks" and saying "JBoss is simply not ready for mission critical software." While you take tremendous pride in your work, and while you publish your code under LGPL, those things alone do not automatically qualify the JBoss server as "ready for mission critical software." Keep up your work, and someday you'll change my mind.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Clustered JCache for Grid Computing!

I use JBoss to control robots that process jet engine parts...failure results in damage to $7-figure parts or death/injury to those around the robot...I've never had a single problem with it. I can't say the same thing for Weblogic.

Not to be greedy for attention or anything, but it's quite surprising how quickly the discussion focused on JBoss and BEA. I can't tell whether you've one-track minds focused on those two, or whether you've remarkably short attention spans. :)

that when someone makes a categorical statement about a technology (or anything) and you know it's not true that you correct them, particularly when it is in a publig forum where it can affect the decision process of others. I could care less about JBoss, inc...but the free app server and related projects are excellent.

Joe: Not to be greedy for attention or anything, but it's quite surprising how quickly the discussion focused on JBoss and BEA. I can't tell whether you've one-track minds focused on those two, or whether you've remarkably short attention spans. :)

Joe, I guess you're just not controversial enough ;-) .. nothing stirs up controversy in this industry as arguing over IDEs and app servers.

Good luck to you. Are you leaving the "editor" world behind now, or should we expect to see you pop up elsewhere? BTW if you're at JavaOne, drop by and say 'hi.'

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Clustered JCache for Grid Computing!

Bill, there's a big difference between saying "JBoss sucks" and saying "JBoss is simply not ready for mission critical software." While you take tremendous pride in your work, and while you publish your code under LGPL, those things alone do not automatically qualify the JBoss server as "ready for mission critical software." Keep up your work, and someday you'll change my mind.

One of those moments when I can totally side with Cameron.
Most of the people I know (granted, very few of them develop in open source) have unambiguous and clear perception: if it’s open source – it is a crap. Now, there are known and pleasant exceptions to this rule: Hibernate, Ant, Junit, and some. And I would second Cameron’s opinion that mere LGPL or just open sourcing something doesn’t make it any better than any other products. In fact, it’s been argued that loss of conceptual integrity of the product due to nature of open source development badly offsets any gains from wide-spread testing. Indeed, if product is poorly designed no amount of testing will help.

Coming back to JBoss I agree that it is a decent educational product for single server or small cluster (2-3 boxes) installation with small to medium load at best. In this situation it has great value and I believe that there is a substantial market for such deployments.

But it’s enough to look at JavaGroups source code or JBoss’s transaction manager implementation (check out CVS) to understand that people at JBoss have a lot to learn just in basic programming… To be fair we should be clear that we indeed can look at the source of JBoss which is not the case for the most of commercial software, and so I’m not singling out the JBoss specifically but just replying on the topic.

Regards,
Nikita Ivanov.

Nikita: Most of the people I know (granted, very few of them develop in open source) have unambiguous and clear perception: if it’s open source – it is a crap.

I don't really differentiate between open source and commercial products in this manner -- I think you would have no problem showing that a hefty percentage of software is (as you so eloquently put it) crap. I think that -- in general -- software quality has not increased in "the Internet age," and in some ways it has become both more difficult to use and more buggy. In this respect, open source has a higher hurdle to jump over, because you can download the source and see the problems for yourself (your references were one example.) Open source also has a lower barrier to entry (e.g. access to a browser and sourceforge.net) and no economic threshold (e.g. projects are still available years after they were abandoned in a 70% complete state,) both of which act to dilute the perception of quality that is built up by well-managed high-quality open source projects.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Clustered JCache for Grid Computing!

But it’s enough to look at JavaGroups source code or JBoss’s transaction manager implementation (check out CVS) to understand that people at JBoss have a lot to learn just in basic programming… To be fair we should be clear that we indeed can look at the source of JBoss which is not the case for the most of commercial software, and so I’m not singling out the JBoss specifically but just replying on the topic

You'd better have a look at OracleAS JAZN(JAAS) implementation - that's a reeeal mess...:) It's easier to face with JBoss problems than closed-source products, e.g. the above mentioned one.

Regards,
Theodore Kupolov

I'm sad to write that at this point I trust very little of what any associate of JBoss has to say.

In my experience working with Weblogic 7, 8, and JBoss - JBoss is faster, easier to manange, has easier to implement clustering, and more reliable hot-deploy features and is far less bug-ridden. The new bugs that get introduced between service packs in WebLogic have brought my projects to a grinding HALT until 'hot-fixes' are made available. While WLS 8 is *better* than 7 (7 is just garbage) I'm still not impressed - especially with licenses starting at 10k/CPU.And don't get me started about how BAD WebLogic support has gotten.Of the commercially licensable projects out there - I think Borland Enterprise Server is probably the all-around best product for the money. But JBoss definitely has all of the beat in features vs. cost of ownership.

I find your assertion quite hard to believe. I am working on WLS 7 with Service Pack 2 -- I haven't seen any dire problems like you had. I also work with Jboss3x -- and its not as wonderful as you make it out to be -- especially when it comes to JMS. If I am not mistaken, even Resin beats Jboss 3x hands down in performance. If 10k/cpu is an issue , head for Resin or Pramati or Borland.

JBoss, IMHO, is technically better that WebLogic in many areas if not all (no I don't work for JBoss - I just use the server).

Can you explain why JBoss in your opinion is technically better than WebLogic ?

In my experience working with Weblogic 7, 8, and JBoss - JBoss is faster, easier to manange, has easier to implement clustering, and more reliable hot-deploy features and is far less bug-ridden. The new bugs that get introduced between service packs in WebLogic have brought my projects to a grinding HALT until 'hot-fixes' are made available. While WLS 8 is *better* than 7 (7 is just garbage) I'm still not impressed - especially with licenses starting at 10k/CPU.And don't get me started about how BAD WebLogic support has gotten.Of the commercially licensable projects out there - I think Borland Enterprise Server is probably the all-around best product for the money. But JBoss definitely has all of the beat in features vs. cost of ownership.

What?? JBoss is better than WebLogic? JBoss is faster and easier to manage? Are you kidding? I hope you are as I've been a WebLogic user since 1999, right after the BEA acquisition and it is a rock solid application server that runs circles around JBoss. We use JBoss at our company for small applications and it just sucks - Mostly we use JBoss to get a better negotiating position with BEA when we buy additional licenses of WebLogic or renegotiate our contracts. I will agree that v7.0 of WebLogic had many issues, but I would take v7.0 over JBoss anytime.

Cheers

--Vinny

On the other hand, while I don't think that Eclipse is better than JBuilder (in fact in many ways I think it's anemic compared to JBuilder) I always hear the *same* response from Eclipse users when I ask them why they use it instead of using JBuilder or something like it; "Because Eclipse is Open Source!"

I dont see much point of comparing JBuilder with Eclipse framework.
Eclipse is an open source framework not just an java IDE. We have successfully built a Large scale Commecial application with Eclipse framework.

But If u compare Eclipse JDE with JBuilder, I can say
Many Eclipse plugin projects are being developed and will take over JBuilder capabilities very soon.
Simple workspace resource (files, folders etc...) of eclipse manipulation is far more better than cumbersome JBuilder IDE.

Hasith Yaggahavita
(Sri Lanka)

... I always hear the *same* response from Eclipse users when I ask them why they use it instead of using JBuilder or something like it; "Because Eclipse is Open Source!" ....

I use both products, JBuilder and Eclipse. And I believe that the reason people uses Eclipse instead of JBuilder is the same reason I dumped JBuilder and use Eclipse: it's because you get your project done with Eclipse without paying a hefty price tag NOT because just an "Open Source"

And this essay seems to confirm all of the reasons I had for stopping to read it a good 2-3 years ago. The shilling, the light technical content, and the anti-BEA stance all combined to generate disappointment in what I used to respect as the #1 Java magazine.... Ah well.

Let me know something, What’s wrong with this complicated philosophy that Open Source is belong to everyone !!! and people want to discuss it. Off course I am willing to read article about JBoss, Hibernate, Tomcate rather than "come and buy me please I can be more complicated(EJB) so you need more training(certifications ,thicker books)"... I just wonder if these open source wasn't around how many years of my life was going for learning.

Let me know something, What’s wrong with this complicated philosophy that Open Source is belong to everyone !!! and people want to discuss it. Off course I am willing to read article about JBoss, Hibernate, Tomcate rather than "come and buy me please I can be more complicated(EJB) so you need more training(certifications ,thicker books)"... I just wonder if these open source wasn't around how many years of my life was going for learning.

Your view about Opensource is respectable but about commerical Products ?.
having some sort of certification from Sun or IBM or ... means that you are a world calss developer / architect its not wasting of time.
Jonas ,Jboss ,... are good Websphere Is great.
In java technology field more books are published for Opensource Stuff rather than commerical products with same (better or not better) functionality,AFAIK. check the amazon book store.

EJB is complicated for complicated mission, hibernate has its own advantages and probably disadvantages (having sql like QL is good but where is the specification?). Also advertising of complanies doesen't mean that how EJB is.

Good luck Joe. I appreciated your skeptism, fairness, and non-biased opinions. I hope somebody else picks you up and we see you in print again real soon.

Bill Burke
JBoss Inc.

Regardless of comments on overweighing open source, 2005 will be the year where it breaks into the enterprise. This is also the year we should see open source JDKs and once Java gets end-to-end under open source, there will be better publications than JDJ around.

Veekay
http://linux-tech.blogspot.com

Regardless of comments on overweighing open source, 2005 will be the year where it breaks into the enterprise.

LOL. "The year of open source" was 2003, and then 2004, and ... now it's 2005.

Open source *is* in the enterprise. The source licesne of a solution is only one factor in deciding on infrastructure. And it's not one of the main ones.