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ESR, once more, is publicity-whoring on a subject he either knows nothing about, or chooses to be deliberately ignorant of. Any brief perusal of the Java scene will uncover an enormous amount of Open Source work going on, some of it very high quality. (And much less so, of course, but that's the same all over).

What ESR really means is that there's a lack of adoption of Java from Unix/C programmers. This has nothing whatsoever to do with whether Java is Open Source or not, and everything to do with the perception amongst such programmers (whether deserved or not), of the Java language itself. People don't choose Perl, Python or Ruby over Java because the former are open source. People choose them because they prefer using the scripting languages.

I have this feeling that Scott McNealy isn't sitting there thinking "Damn, I guess if we totally cede control over this language, all those Unix nerds who hate Java anyway are going to drop their copies of Python and come rushing to embrace us!"

Charles Miller

I'm a full-time developer, whose Java work typically pays the bills. I have a 1GHz Powerbook that I use; it's the only real UI-friendly computer I even turn on these days (the servers at clients' sites & in my closet don't count). I do all my day-to-day development on my Powerbook, with a CVS server running elsewhere that does the "official" builds, backups, etc etc.

Overall, I've never noticed a performance problem when compiling large applications. As a barometer, I just did an "ant clobber dist" on a current project (around 200 classes, plus 50 JSP pages, etc etc), and it built a distributable in 18 seconds. Not too shabby. Overall, Java compiler performance shouldn't be a concern in purchasing a laptop; if your build takes too long, it's more likely the fault of a poor build process than a slow compiler!

Anyway, Java integration into Mac OS X is the best in the industry. It's amazing -- Apple's OS is more Java-aware than Sun's :) Full graphical Java applications run fast, Java Web Start is built in, and the OS ships with a built-in Java Application Server, JBoss. The only downer is that JVM releases typically lag Sun by 4 - 6 months, but that's acceptable in my mind; it takes that long to shake the "D'oh!" bugs out of a VM anyway.

Finally, if you're going to do lots of development at a desk, I'd also strongly recommend plunking down the $2K for an Apple Flatscreen. Yeah yeah, it's expensive... but you'll be more productive with a great external monitor. And if you're going to be buying that much hardware, you might as well look into joining the Apple Developer Connection, as you might be able to get 12 - 20 % off of hardware purchases (especially if you can claim Student status somehow).

HTH,

--Mid

Yep, J2EE is ridiculously expensive. I mean, just check out these figures...

JBoss Appserver - Cost: $0.00
IBM 1.4 JDK for Linux x86 - Cost: $0.00
Eclipse IDE - Cost: $0.00

Well considering Java's startup time removes it from all manner of applications, it's a bit of a strawman to argue that startup time doesn't matter.

*cough* *cough*
Bullshit
Bullshit
Bullshit
Bullshit
Bullshit
Bullshit
Bullshit

Please take your bullshit trolling elsewhere. There are those of us with work to do.

Ok, so now that Java is on the retreat they try to enter a new area?

It's probably because there's no Java user community or usefull implementations out there. And it has virtually no practical application on the desktop for that matter. Maybe because it doesn't do 3D or sound. Or is not so usefull as far as scalable RDBMS abstraction or a real application server for the enterprise. Maybe they need to move into the mobile market. What's really needed is a good Java IDE to get developers on board. Changes should be driven by the software community and making the source open would help as well. Sun should also be making improvments in Java's next(?) version.

You're right, I guess "we" should just cut our losses.

I personally think that Oracle is much more vulnerable to an Open Source attack than is Microsoft. A lot of pro-Oracle managers justify their support based on benchmarks. As Open Source database offerings surpass Oracle in those key areas, we'll see the case for Oracle dramatically weakened. We have already seen that open source companies like JBOSS are beating Oracle in key markets.

Oh look, these people are patently under 14</sarcasm>

That in under a minutes googling. Now crawl back under a rock troll.

And for people who STILL believe that Java is slow, download eclipse (the url is above, for those of you can't google for it, or even guess it) and have a play...it's written in Java and *GASP* is not only a)amazingly useful, but b)damn snappy, seriously, those people who said Java would never work on the desktop because its too slow, they can start eating their hats.

Plus, I just did a job search for c++ vs. Java on a uk job site and guess what, the number of results returned was nearly identical, so by the look of things, lots of people and companies use Java. IMHO, for enterprise n-tiered applications its the shiznitz.

The reason that Java can be faster is because you can do some really nifty optimisations during runtime with the latest JIT compilers that are impossible (or at least monumentally difficult) to do with compile c/c++ code.

In closing: Here is another benchmark...maybe because he has a domain name you'll trust him more?

Yeah! It's called J2EE. You should check it out sometime. I'm sure the next incarnation, J3EE, will suck the living juice out of any quantum computer thrown at it.

...then yes, it does. However:

"PHP can use the database as the back-end session store."

and

"The ideal multi-server model is a pod architecture, where the router round-robins each of the machines and there is only a minimal session store in the database."

are pretty tough assumptions to swallow. Storing session state in a database only works when you have a small amount of session state to store. Otherwise the database quickly becomes the bottleneck for any operation you need to perform. The alternative is that you have to have your session state distribuited in a cluster, which is something that, AFAIK, you cannot do in PHP. You can, however, do it Java. In fact, some of things that JBoss is trying to do will make session replication across a cluster fairly easy.

PHP can be very useful. I think PHP as a view layer sitting on top of a a J2EE controller and object model would be a wonderful idea. But to say "PHP scales as well as Java" is a huge oversimplification of the extremely complex problem that is enterprise computing.

What a load of crap...
PHP is an awesome and very useful language...but when it comes to scaling...no way.
Want facts? Go look at PHP Nuke vs JBoss' Nukes. Nukes was a Java rewrite of PHP Nuke. They did it because PHP didn't scale very well at all.
Read about it here: JBoss Nukes
and here
O'Rielly Article on Nukes

solutions pulled from my ass. I don't tend to think Java is your problem, and what you are suggesting with the static content/caching/PHP is not a step forward by any means. In fact it sounds like a suggestion from your sysadmin, who is probably a PHP fanatic and does not know any better. Don't know how many times I have had to smack our sysadmin at my company for saying: 'Why does it have to be so complex? just do the whole thing in PHP!' For most people complex means any thing but [insert the only language you know here] I for one think:

1. PHP is not likely to solve your performance problems. It is recompiled every time you hit the page, its not scalable, blah blah we all know the limitations.

2. As suggested somewhere above: Profile you app. Find out if your code just sucks, and fix it.

3. Chances are, you are not taking full advantage of J2EE platform. This is very likely.

4. Your hardware is probably old. Upgrade. I'm guessing you have a big ol' sun box with couple of 750 mhz processors or something old like that. Yes, its a nice big pretty box; yes, it cost you $126,000 and yes, its mostly filled with air. Good luck trying to pawn it off. You can max it out for a few hundred k more.

5. [licensing/costs] Sun/Solaris is Expensive as Hell, so too is your J2ee server. Try a bunch of cluster of intel boxes running JBoss on Linux. Can't get much cheaper than that. You could get a whole farm of these for the price of that sun box. (or you could have, but didnt.) And depending on which J2ee server you are currently using, you wont have to rewrite anything.

6. Oracle is pretty scalable, its relativly fast, but if your code sucks, its your fault.

Is java slow, or does your code suck? You might just want to make better use of what you have. I am a big advocate of Java and open source software of course. Its always worked for us. There is no reason you should'nt be able to do what you are trying to to with Java/J2ee. There are many reasons why other platforms won't cut it, mostly because they were not designed to.

1. 
   
   always the first place one should start
   
   Samples#1
   
   samples#2
   
   examples#3 (part of a SVG webring)
   
   examples#4 (it also answers the question. Who uses this?)
   
   ditto#2
   
   Adobe plugin (shoots down the "hasn't been updated in years" argument)
   
   Too imature for you?
   
   Oh yeah! Immature, and it has a browser plugin too
   
   

Yes, Java has evolved. It started as one platform and has kinda-sorta branched out into 3 spaces: small, medium and large. The "large" spec, for use on "large" server-type computers, is J2EE. The whole J2EE spec is online, and free to anybody who feels like implementing it. It takes time and energy to have Sun "certify" that it meets the spec, and so they charge to become certified, but JBoss did just fine without for a good long time. True, Applets are passe now, (partially/mostly because of the shitty JVM's that came stock in IE for so long) but Java is not going anywhere for a long time to come.

Java isn't open source.

But J2EE definitly can be:

JBoss,Tomcat, Struts, Tapestry, Velocity etc.

There are 50+ open-source J2EE components and frameworks ATM.

Java and .NET take vastly different approaches to development, said John Rymer, a vice president with Forrester Research. Java's philosophy of development is to expose low-level system interfaces to give developers greater control. Microsoft simplifies the development process; the developer has less control -- but the tools are easier to use.

"Before, Microsoft was basically shut out of these projects," Rymer said. .NETs ease of use and lower licensing costs also will be a draw.

Having worked with both Java and .NET, I would say that things like C#'s foreach statement make for easier and cleaner code, but Java 1.5 will leapfrog C# when it introduces generics along with its own version of foreach, and other timesaving features. Java's big failing, IMHO, is Swing. It is too big and too clunky, Java is crying out for a stripped down GUI library that is part of the API spec that will be as easy to work wit

I know /. isn't a real journal or anything, and that its editors have no aspirations toward such, but for God's sake, 30 sec of research resulted in this It's a month-old press release (linked from the JBoss front page) that makes a much better link for the story.

Its seems strange that the JBoss Group has decided to seek J2EE certification at this stage when JBoss appears to move further from the J2EE spec with each release. They even clearly are aiming to market themselves themselves as "Beyond J2EE", according to their site.

Definitely possible...

JBoss has JBossIDE, a set of plugins for running JBoss and related stuff in Eclipse.

MyEclipseIDE looks like it offers a plugin that supports several app servers, if you join for $30/year.

Plus, WSAD (WebSpere Studio Application Developer) is basically just Eclipse with plugins to run WebSphere.

Correct.
Anyway... it's only matter of installing just one additional package :).

+ + + +
I am quite sure to have read or heard somewhere (maybe at the Italian JavaConference that the Jakarta project wished to integrated an EJB container inside Tomcat for version 5.0 or 6.0. Can't find a reference however :(. Maybe it was too much Twix & Cappuccino. :(

+ + + +
Mental note: stop eating junk food before posting on slashdot.

I can name two projects off the top of my head (JBOSS MySQL) that both turn a profit and both are open source software.

Can you support those claims with some evidence?

I went and looked at the My SQL press releases. While they claim to be "successful," they never claim to be profitable. In fact they're still looking for rounds of outside investment, an unusual act for a profitable company. Since they're privately held we don't have access to their finances, but they haven't claimed to be profitable.

JBoss, the services company, is also privately held, and does not claim to be proftable.

(My hat's off to Red Hat, though, for finally coming up with a profit that can't be dismissed as tweaking the ledgers!)

If you think the only money in software is selling the binary, you are again, lost. Try getting some free support on MS windows or MS office, etc. Try getting some free training for windows or office, etc.

Services due to their non-scalability -- whcih is a way of saying you have to pay for headcount per dollar earned -- is inherently less profitable that software sales -- which due to the economies of copying don't require headcount per dollar. Services don't provide the necessary financial oomph for the development of original software.

Tim

From IBM's own mouth, they make over 80% of their revenues on custom integrations and support, which means that GPL software is a good choice from their perspective. Proprietary software wouldn't make them much more money.

There's probably at least a little wariness of the licensing mess they could get into doing integrations. A lot of integration software is container-based, like an application server; you deploy your program into another piece of software that provides application services.

Since the GPL FAQ regards plugins as covered by the GPL, it doesn't take much of a stretch to regard software deployed in a GPL'd container as also covered by the GPL. (The JBoss application server is LGPL'd, I would assume for that very reason.)

Given that, as a private company specialising in a particular vertical domain such as medicine or finance, you may wish to retain the domain knowledge encoded in your software for later resale, having it GPL'd by default may not thrill you.

All of this is not an argument not to use open-source or GPL'd software by default, of course. But it does suggest that integration and vertical application vendors might be more than a little wary of the full GPL where it applies to container-like software.

When you compare the Core Developers members to the JBoss team, you'll see that the guys who "walked-out" are minor players.

This is basically a lot of hype, and a dirty trick to get some publicity.

No one in their right mind would trust these guys with a support contract.

JBoss 4.0 DR1 (Developer Release 1) is based on Aspect Oriented Programming.

Check it out!:
Aspect-Oriented Programming and JBoss
JBoss 4.0 Developer Release JBoss
JBoss Aspect Oriented Programming
Download it now!

JBoss 4.0 DR1 (Developer Release 1) is based on Aspect Oriented Programming.

Check it out!:
Aspect-Oriented Programming and JBoss
JBoss 4.0 Developer Release JBoss
JBoss Aspect Oriented Programming
Download it now!

Who? what? when? why? how? If someone could answer those five basic questions about this story, many of us would appreciate it.

Here are the faces behind those names in the article.

• huge developer base
• almost all universities teach it
• It works equally good (if not better) on linux and OS X
• JDBC - works equally well on all databases
• JBoss Hey it's free, and it's good.
• IntelliJ IDEA not free, but worth every euro!
• Jakarta community is unrivalled.
• ANT simply the best build tool.
• Options, options, options. No single vendor lock in.

I've never heard of JBoss before, but it seems it will turn almost any J2SE into a J2EE. But where do I get my J2SE (a Java 2 Standard Edition, runtime environment, libraries, and compiler) so that it works correctly?

Right now, on my GNU/Linux system with a PowerPC CPU (a Macintosh), I'm running Blackdown Java (J2SE) 1.3.

Anonymous Coward wrote: It is real, effective, efficient and fit my need ;) In my case

1. Java is sometimes not real. Programs using the GUI (JFC/Swing) are not working. I can't get the latest version of Java 1.4, because its not ported to PowerPC.
2. Java is sometimes not effective. Java is my preferred programming language, and usually effective. It would help if I could use collections with generics, but once Java 1.5 is out providing this, it probably won't be ported to my platform.
3. Java is sometimes not efficient. Interpreted Java bytecodes are fast enough for me, but my platform does not provide JIT or HotSpot acceleration.

I am watching potential sources of ports (Blackdown, GNU Classpath, GCJ, and Jikes RVM) for emerging Java 1.4 or 1.5 that actually works. Until then I won't have working Java.

Anonymous Coward wrote: What MS fears the most is Linux + Java. Because it is a more powerfull that they can even provide. However in my case, working Java is an incentive for me to switch to an x86 computer with Microsoft Windows, in order to run Windows + Java.

I can't help but notice the rather unusual character of JBoss team (the premiere open source Java server). Is the disconnect due to money problems forcing Asian Indians to work for money? If so, then why the absence of Asian Indians in the Top Coders where the top guys are making enough money in prizes to live in the US or Europe?

I've heard the opposite.

Of course he's biased, but Marc Fleury (of JBoss) is very enthusiastic about CMP (Container Managed Persistence) v2.0 EJB's.
In his "Blue" Whitepaper on the subject he wrote that the CMP (Container Managed Persistence) v1.1 of EJBs was seriously lacking in various critical aspects, and goes on to say the following:

From Marc Fleury's "Why I love EJB's" (PDF, page 7):

In other words, if the CMP2.0 engine s applicability goes beyond EJB alone, why couldn t we imagine a CMP engine working on abstract plain old java objects? We will look at making it the default service for persistence in JBoss. In fact I would argue that CMP2.0 is doing what JDO failed to do, providing a robust and frameworkworthy persistence engine for java (once generalized). While it was widely used in designs a year ago, JDO will probably go down in history as the proverbial chicken that crossed the road when the CMP2.0 truck came along.

- Brian

Face it: if Ellison and his buddies hadn't bought congress to get the H-1b program, most of the folks reading this would be in a far better economic position. For that matter if McNealy's co-religionist Greenspan(McNealy and Greenspan are both Ayn Rand fans) were consistent in his policies, instead of playing games that centralize assets you'd be a lot better off.

There would be a slump right now even without H-1b, but instead of 500,000 unemployed engineers, we might be looking at 50,000 or so-it that.

There are still a lot of high leverage areas in software: embedded systems, bioinformatics, robotics. What isn't clear to me if dinosaurs like Oracle,Microsoft, Sun really should be playing any role in the new software business. I say that we just Open Source all the technology of these companies-starting with Oracle.

JBOSS is a decent application server that completed head to head with Oracle Application Server. Postgres can be made better than Oracle(big missing feature is replication which is coming along fast). The accounting packages Oracle sells can be replaced by stuff that evolves from stuff like SQL Ledger. All in all, I think Oracle will be dead before Microsoft. Good Riddance.

It may not be a new idea, but it is being used in new and interesting applications.

This is offtopic but I saw this story at CNET last week talking about JBOSS . The idea is basically creating the underpinnings for JAVA much the way .NET creates most of the underpinnings for .NET apps. Maybe this is reinventing the wheel but it sounded like a good idea to me.

As for free software in java, try looking at all the serverside tools.

jakarta
jboss
(and about a million other projects...)

for client developer tools
tigris

I don't understand the distinction of development shops. If anything, developers are less tolerant of poorly performing tools than consumers, at least in my experience...

You're absolutely correct. Tomcat is not (and will likely never be) an EJB container. It's a very nice Servlet container, though...

However, once Tomcat's installed, it wouldn't be a big leap to then install JBoss to work in tandem with Tomcat, providing those missing EJB container services. It seems like a very nice package.

BEA is already competing against an Open Source product-and loosing the battle. Oracle could be a fairly early casualty. A big chunk of the appeal of Oracle rests on its ability to compete in industry standard benchmarks. Open Source products have historically tended lang behind in having "glitzy" interfaces-but have tended to excel in reliabilitly and performance. It is clearly a logical development that in the next few years, the Oracle database will find itself replaced by an Open Source Database-this will be a tremendous blow to the prestige of Oracle as a company.

Now, most Oracle revenue comes from sevices and various accounting programs-but there are also starting to emerge various Open Source Accounting packages(i.e. SQL Ledger) that might in time start to hit Oracle more directly in the pocketbook.

Oh sorry.

Maybe you should try this next time: JBoss

EJB certainly isn't the perfect technology (what is?), and the specification is lacking in some points (generation of primary keys and an incomplete query language), but it is certainly useful. Take a look at O'Reilley's "Building Enterprise Java Applications (vol 1)", it has a nice overview of enterprise java technologies and how they fit together. It discusses how to use session and entity beans effectively - in essense, you shouldn't be sending entity beans to your client (which it sounds like the guy in the original post was doing - this will kill performance due to the number of RMI calls that will be generated), your clients should typically interact with session beans that perform the business logic using the entity beans.

With respect to cost, there's JBoss, that's free, and there are many other venders at a variety of prices and performance. I use JBoss - I did, for a time, see some nasty performance problems, but after reading some documentation quickly realized that it was my mistake.

They do have public forums and mailing lists that provide user-user help with some assistance from the core developers.

But if you want to get the 'real' documentation right from the developers you've got to pay for it.

JBoss follows this same idea. The software is open source but the documentation must be paid for. I don't disagree with this because its a business model supporting open source that may work. To JBoss's credit, they do offer a basic manual for free.

And Why re-implement either? - Opens source development often follows the successful strategy of finding a standard that works and re-implementing it and building upon it. Linux from Unix, JBoss from Sun's J2EE specs, etc.
If it comes to a choice between one of the dominant webservice standards, Java or .NET, who should open source developers choose?

Try require() [php.net] and include() [php.net]
Use it all the time. I don't think it is nearly as good a packages in java in a large project. Small projects it works great.

Ask these [zend.org] guys about compiling PHP scripts. Alternatively talk to these [php-accelerator.co.uk] guys about caching your interpreted, 'compiled' code.
Alternatively if you want the ability to take control over you application and really do some cool stuff with caching/cluster ect.. try these guys JBoss If you read about there Interceptors you may see what kind of control I am talking about.

PHP fully supports ncurses for direct input.
Also, I personally have written quite a few small daemons with PHP which had their own UI. Example code to write your own can be found under this [php.net] section of the PHP manual.
And I quote from the link you posted "This extension is EXPERIMENTAL". PHP is a web scripting language. If PHP does not become a generic scripting language it will probably suffer the same fate ColdFusion did. Why reinvent what Python already does and better. Python is a much better scripting language I am trying to use replace Python with all the stuff I currently use PHP for because I get things like... threading, OO stuff, application servers, PASS BY REFERENCE and a whole lot more.If I want to script I use Python.

it doesn't end at printf("Hello
Your right you can extend all you want in C!! So you can get PHP to make RPC call into you EJB server when it is time to build a maintable, scalable large application. Not that you can't do it in PHP I have tried.. And I am sure you can it is just I found it a lot easier, faster and better to do it in Java.

Just thought I would add my flame to the fire.
Lateef

• Which IDE you want to use, ranging from Open Source $0 IDE to commercial ones.
• Which source control you want to use, ranging from Open Source $0 source control to commercial ones.
• Which middle tier implementation you want to use, ranging from Open Source $0 application servers to commercial ones
• Which database you want to use, ranging from Open Source $0 databases to commercial ones.

In short, you choose J2EE in order to have a choice of what software you want to use within your business and how much you are willing to pay for it, what hardware (Intel, Sun, IBM) and operating systems (Linux, Windows, Solaris, AIX, OS/400) requirements you have, and what requirements you have on the performance (single Intel box to 64 CPU Sun box to IBM mainframe) and scalability of your application.

You make J2EE match your requirements rather than force yourself to match .NET requirements.

You don't. You use JBoss. Why would you build your own server from scratch when you can already customize and extend the JBoss core server as much as you need (be it for J2EE purposes or not).

We are seriously considering and are currently evaluating JBoss, after less than two years with WebLogic. Motives?

We are not satisfied with:
1. Licence costs
2. Performance
3. Support costs
4. Easy of use

Preliminary data looks good for JBoss.

You can find JBoss related documentation here, both for free and for pay docs.

I've been using products from the Apache group for many years now, and I have never encountered a problem that wasn't addressed (one way or another) in mailing lists, newsgroups, etc.

When I encountered a problem with JBoss, I immediately went through the same channels but found nothing. I then noticed that they have a forum on their website and quickly found postings from other people with the same problem. The answer from the JBoss "experts": Buy the book! (take a look for yourself here and here or simply search for "buy the book" in their forums!).

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against selling documentation as a business model, nor am I against the certification scheme. But what kind of an answer is that??

They may have a cool product, but with that attitude, I don't think it will be long before some people throw together a JBoss Documentation Project and bypass them alltogether. It is open source after all :)

I've been using products from the Apache group for many years now, and I have never encountered a problem that wasn't addressed (one way or another) in mailing lists, newsgroups, etc.

When I encountered a problem with JBoss, I immediately went through the same channels but found nothing. I then noticed that they have a forum on their website and quickly found postings from other people with the same problem. The answer from the JBoss "experts": Buy the book! (take a look for yourself here and here or simply search for "buy the book" in their forums!).

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against selling documentation as a business model, nor am I against the certification scheme. But what kind of an answer is that??

They may have a cool product, but with that attitude, I don't think it will be long before some people throw together a JBoss Documentation Project and bypass them alltogether. It is open source after all :)

Surprisingly, Tomcat is used in his example setup.

Surprised? Most Java developers use Tomcat for a servlet app server (not a full blown app server, but you can have that if you tie-in JBoss). Tomcat is great for development if you aren't dealing with EJBs.
Most Java developers I know use Tomcat before an app server is chosen so they can get stuff working, and will stay with tomcat unless the customer has a license for an expensive appserver or they are using EJBs.

No. JBoss 3.0 now comes with Jetty as standard. Check out the Jboss download page and the comment regarding Jetty as the default web server.