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JBoss Founder Interview
peterdaly writes "The JBoss website has an interview with Marc Fleury, the JBoss founder regarding his vision. In case you have been living under a rock, JBoss is an Open Source Java Application Server (J2EE) which has been picking up tons of steam recently, especially with the recent introduction of features like clustering. Competing products from companies like IBM (WebSphere) and BEA (WebLogic) go for tens of thousands of dollars, which is interesting since JBoss is starting to have features the big boys don't. JBoss had 72,000 downloads in October. This is a project to watch."
...JBoss article.... must... plug... Jakarta Project.
Jakarta contains whole bunches of open source tools that work great for Java Projects (I'm using struts and ant on my current project).
They all work extremely well (and simple to install) with JBoss.
I don't know the level of people using JBoss, though. The top two app servers are WebSphere and Weblogic. They take 50% of the market. The next is iPlanet (netscape), then I think its JBoss. So, even though its the cheapest (free), doesn't mean its got the market.
It'll be tough to crack WebSphere & WebLogic.
What JBoss needs is a certification (with levels) for developers to obtain.
If I go to a client and say "I have a level 3 WebLogic certification, a level 2 WebSphere certification, and know JBoss", what are they gonna pick?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Let's face it - JBoss appeals to us Slashdotters because
(a) It's open source
(b) It has a whole heap of fantastic development features.
What I didn't see an emphasis on is running on a daily basis in production. Sure, I think that JBoss is fantastic for development, and most of the leading edge features are great for developers, but what about running a mission critical production system? What benefits does it provide in that arena, given that if I have Weblogic or WebSphere, and it breaks on my 24x7 website, I can scream at the respective vendors?
Develop with JBoss, deploy with WebSphere/Weblogic. Anyone enlighten me to benefits of JBOSS in production over a commercial offering?
Gollo.
Actually, Tomcat is a J2EE compliant "Web Container" so it must support Servlets and JSP, but it does not have to support EJB, JNDI, JMS, etc. etc.
You missed the most important layer, and I'm betting that that's because that layer actually isn't open source.
Are you running this on Kaffe? gcj? ORP? Kissme?
Didn't think so. (If you actually are, I'm dead impressed - please let me know how you managed it)
You're using Sun's J2SDK. Which isn't open source.
I'll be very happy when it really is possible to put together an open source J2EE stack. But that day isn't today, because the VM/classlib layer has no open source alternative that's up to running these enterprise-level apps.
That applies to most languages. Just understanding the syntax is about an hour or so of work for most programmers (shorter if they are experienced, longer if they haven't seen a real language yet).
However, whether you are dealing with the STL, MFC or the Java API, it takes time to get productive with that. The Java API is simply huge and covers an enormous amount of functionality that you don't have to invent yourself. Luckily, there is JavaDoc that helps to browse through APIs. In addition, most APIs are well designed and have been through extensive review processess (unlike the crap Microsoft pours out over you) so if you know your design patterns, you won't have trouble understanding how everything fits together.
If other languages appear to be simpler, maybe that is because they don't include so much functionality and require you to do more work reinventing the wheel.
Jilles
While I am a big fan of JBoss (ever since EJBoss), it does have a long way to go to gain market share in the industry. People who make the decisions would rather put their neck on the line for big companies like BEA or IBM, be it right or wrong. Does this guy really think that BEA and IBM aren't working on their next versions as well? It's a tough market, I just hope JBoss doesn't get too confident.