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Oracle Now Wants To Give Java EE to an Open Source Foundation (infoworld.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the runtime dept.

An anonymous reader quotes InfoWorld: Oracle wants to end its leadership in the development of enterprise Java and is looking for an open source foundation to take on the role. The company said Thursday that the upcoming Java EE (Enterprise Edition) 8 presents an opportunity to rethink how the platform is developed. Although development is done via open source with community participation, the current Oracle-led process is not seen as agile, flexible, or open enough. "We believe that moving Java EE technologies to an open source foundation may be the right next step, to adopt more agile processes, implement more flexible licensing and change the governance process," Oracle said in a statement...

Despite its desire to retreat from Java EE leadership, Oracle said it plans to continue participating in the evolution of Java EE technologies. "But we believe a more open process, that is not dependent on a single vendor as platform lead, will encourage greater participation and innovation, and will be in best interests of the community"... Oracle's goals for offloading Java EE would have Oracle not lead the project as it still effectively does with Java SE.
Red Hat's senior principal product manager called this "a very positive move," while Eclipse's executive director said that moving Java EE to a vendor-neutral open source foundation "would be great for both the platform and the community," adding "If asked to so, the Eclipse Foundation would be pleased to serve as the host organization."

7 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Translation by darkain · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "We can't milk this for licensing money anymore, so we no longer want to invest in it"

    1. Re:Translation by Freischutz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "We can't milk this for licensing money anymore, so we no longer want to invest in it"

      "Yay, if Oracle hands Java EE over to a FOSS foundation we can finally fix all the things that are wrong with Java and that we've been bitching about Oracle being unwilling to fix for years."

    2. Re:Translation by rholtzjr · · Score: 5, Informative
      And yes, I understand that this eventually became Java API vs just Java (which in my opinion was a "ooops we want a do over" by Oracle AFTER they saw Android take off). The first judge I believe had it right in the first place. And he expressed his concerns (excerpt):

      Each command calls into action a pre-assigned function. The overall name tree, of course, has creative elements but it is also a precise command structure — a utilitarian and functional set of symbols, each to carry out a pre-assigned function. This command structure is a system or method of operation under Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act and, therefore, cannot be copyrighted. Duplication of the command structure is necessary for interoperability.

  2. Re:Finally by arth1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Apache Foundation and Red Hat seem to be the two entities that may have enough momentum to absorb something this big. Eclipse would be nice, but can they grow that much that quickly without hurting their core?

    Anyhow, beware of Ellisons bearing gifts.

  3. when something don't give money to Oracle ... by Yonsy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They release this, and in many cases after become polluted by the same Oracle. OpenOffice is practically dead, Hudson is a dead corpse now when you talk about CI, Netbeans was proposed by the same Oracle for pass to an Apache Incubator project. MySQL is in a close match against MariaDB and Percona, after stupid attempts to complicate the release of the source code.

    This will be the first time that Oracle give the product BEFORE screw up and kill this, after almost 7 years (Sun acquisition by Oracle finished in 2010). I maintain my doubts, more based in the privative licenses that Oracle can have in several JEE components, before gives this to an Open Community. This was an attempt with OpenJDK and OracleJDK "differences".

  4. Nice by grumpy-cowboy · · Score: 4, Funny

    Can we now integrate it to systemd please.

    --
    Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
  5. Java EE != Java by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Java EE is a set of libraries written in Java to build "Enterprise applications". I don't know anyone who uses Java EE as it has been largely replaced with Spring Framework (which pretty much does the same thing, only better). So Oracle giving up on Java EE is nothing new or significant as they still own and control the Java platform. The "EE" in the name makes a huge difference...