As part of the first batch, Oracle provided JAX-RS to the Eclipse Foundation. And now? What happened since then? What will come in future? Is Oracle bailing out? Who chimed in? And when will there be JAX-RS 2.2 or 3.0?
As a JAX-RS Committer member, I will answer lots of these questions in my talk at Java Forum Stuttgart July 4th 2018.
Today Bruno Borges, Principal Developer Advocate for Java at Microsoft, announced that his company likes to join the Jakarta EE working group. Why this is worth a note? Because Jakarta EE is the new trade name of the industrial standard formerly known as Java EE (Java Enterprise Edition) and Microsoft -at least so far- did not have a product implementing this complete umbrella standard (it did support only few bricks).
I once said that Microsoft will get rid of Windows in favor of Linux, and this is happening right now. I also once said that Microsoft will drop C# and Dotnet in favor of Java and Java EE. So maybe you understand now, why I think this is exciting news!
The Java One Conference does not exist anymore. As Oracle’s Steven Chin announced recently, Oracle replaced the Java-centric conference by another one better covering Oracle’s technological portfolio, named “Oracle Code”. It embraces many other technologies. Or in other words: It provides much less Java now.
For those of you which still think the number one development platform is what you like to hear and talk about: JavaLand 2019 is prepared to welcome you, and it is full of Java!
As you might have heared, the technology formerly known as Java EE, developed by the JCP, meanwhile is developed by the Eclipse Foundation’s EE4J Community under the name Jakarta EE. It is completely open source, and can be forked on Github. But hey, what means “developed by the Eclipse Foundation“?
Well, it means that “nobody” will work on it if not you. Sure, the big stakeholders like Oracle, IBM, and so on, will continue to contribute their fair share. Bit this is not enough to outweigh the many helping hands formerly being on Oracle’s payroll. So it is time for you to chime in! If you want to bring this technology formward, the EE4J community needs YOU!
meet me @ javaland
Certainly there are lots of questions for people coming into the project, and even more questions if this is your first open source contribution. So to get you motor started, let me be your mentor. As you might know, I am a contributor to JAX-RS since the very beginnings, served on the JAX-RS experts groups for 2.0 and 2.1 (JCP JSR 339, 370), maintained some JAX-RS extension projects, currently I am an Eclipse Foundation Committer Member serving in the JAX-RS project.
So if you want to help, contact me. Either by email, by blog comment, or face-to-face: You can meet me at the Javaland conference in Germany:
BTW, if you have a close look at the Javaland lineup, you will notice many more EE4J VIPs: For example, you can also meet Christian Kaltepoth (MVC API) and even the EE4J PMC Lead Ivar Grimstad!
Join EE4J – Meet us at Javaland!
Just back from #ECon2017’s EE4J BoF: Slightly optimistic now. Let’s see if Oracle keeps word.
Today I am attending #ECon2017 in Ludwigsburg / Germany to meet PMC members of EE4J. Let’s see what they tell us about the relationship between JCP (Standards Body) and EF (RI/TCK vendor).
It’s rather clear that large companies have to make money. And it is clear that less invests are spent when a product or division does not produce enough revenue. In Germany we have a saying: “You can spend your money only once.” — so you certainly invest it in the most promising field.
On the other hand, SPARC and Solaris do make money. Both are a tightly related team, providing valueable solutions. But not as much as x86 and Linux. So what do you do? You lay off thousands. My hope is, other SPARC and Solaris vendors will chime in, and hire at least some of these experts to continue the good work and products for some more years or even decades.
What makes me fear is the question whether Java will follow. With the same justification Oracle could close the Java section just today. I doubt that Java makes more revenue thatn SPARC + Oracle. Yes, Java still is the #1 developoment platform as of today, and with huge distance. And yes, Java is continuously adjusted to latest trends, so it will even stay for decades. But money? No, really, no. Looking at all the people and companies I am in discussion with — nobody, really none, is paying for Java. The reason is that the free part of Java is so good (namely OpenJDK and Oracle Java SE and lots of open source tools and frameworks) that nobody simply needs to buy additional stuff or services. Yes, Oracle has paid services and really really great embedded JVMs for sale — but again, you can spend your money only once.
So what next? My assumption is, after Java EE then will follow Java SE and with it all the rest of Oracle’s Java assets. Will that be the end of Java? No. There is a huge community, and there even when no big stakeholder will chime in, smallers will do. Instead of IBM or Google owning Java as a whole, there will be something like “The Java Foundation” (just like The Linux Foundation or The Debian Foundation) who is democratic, has hundreds of members, and will control the Java Universe in possibly an even better and more stable way that any single company could or would.
So let’s just wait and see what happens. My personal guess is: Java 10 will be the last one from the big red company, and it would make sense to start more community activity now.
