Java EE moving to an open source foundation

Oracle announced that it is planning on exploring with the community the possibility of moving Java EE technologies to an open source foundation.

Red Hat, the largest open source software company in the world, is built on the principles of the open source way and takes the transformative effects of openness from the community, through the technology, and into the organization. We think that moving Java EE to an open source foundation would be very positive and will benefit the entire Enterprise Java community, customers, and end users.

While there is a lot of detail to flesh out, Red Hat is optimistic and applauds Oracle’s decision to advance Java EE under a collaborative open source community. Red Hat looks forward to working with Oracle, and the broader Java and Eclipse MicroProfile communities to help align efforts to drive Enterprise Java forward. We concur that this move will accelerate the continued evolution of Java EE with fuller participation from and governance by the community. The use of standards is a key element in the design and implementation of production-ready systems and a need that customers will always have.

In addition, Java EE in an open source foundation would benefit from:

• the open source culture that Red Hat inherently embraces
• the opportunity to grow the community even more
• a more permissive license to encourage both new contributions and new implementations/distributions
• the flexibility to evolve more quickly
• end-user developers’ ability to use Java EE-related technologies much more quickly, and
• community-driven governance, management, contribution, and feedback.

End customers and developers with Java skills would also see benefits, such as:

• new Java EE functionality that results from community collaboration and market needs
• new Java EE functionality delivered faster to customers and developers
• continued use of Java EE to develop modern architectures and applications, and
• cost savings from not having to re-train your developers on another framework.

According to Oracle, this change will happen post Java EE 8 release, so we do not expect any Java EE 8 impact. At this point Java EE 8 is pretty much defined. We have supported this effort (as we have previous versions going back to J2EE 1.3) and are working on a supported JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP) product.

Red Hat welcomes Oracle’s announcement, reaffirms its commitment to the support and development of Java EE, and believes that moving the standard to an open source foundation that is not dependent on a single vendor as platform lead would not only advance Java EE but also bring about many benefits that the entire Java community will be able to reap.