Thread by @mmilinkov

I wanted to share some additional thoughts on my recent blog post regarding @JakartaEE eclipse-foundation.blog/2019/05/03/jak…

The Java community certainly has lots of smart and passionate people in it. And while the reaction has, for the most part, been pragmatic, I would like to comment on some of the Oracle bashing that I think is unwarranted.

Specifically, Oracle did *not* kill Java EE.

Nor is the technology formerly known as Java EE dead. There is far more to an industry platform than a namespace.

I am personally disappointed with our result, not the least because of my investment of 100s of hours trying to come up with a solution. It’s no fun to be emotionally invested in something as large and complicated as the migration of Java EE and end up with an imperfect result.

As some commenters have pointed out, when a company says that they’re going to contribute something to an open source foundation, it is reasonable to assume that the contribution will be made under the normal processes of the organization.

And for all of the open source pieces of this story (GlassFish and friends, the TCKs) that did happen. But it turns out that the interactions of open source licensing, community processes, and trademarks are very complicated.

In the case of Java EE ==> Jakarta EE, things were *extremely* complicated, because Oracle is keeping Java, and has a lot invested in that brand and trademark. Trying to unravel the knot of Java SE vs Java EE, javax, etc. turned out to be impossible

But let’s reflect for a moment on what Oracle *has* contributed. Because there is a lot of good stuff here to accompany the disappointments.

Oracle contributed millions of lines of code in the reference implementations for Java EE, including GlassFish, Jersey, Grizzly, etc. The goal is to rally a community around these Eclipse open source projects, and there are some early signs of success

Oracle contributed the Java EE TCK. This was a huge step for them, as it was highly confidential and proprietary until then. This was a very large asset, with millions of dollars in Java EE licensing revenue attached to it.

Open TCKs are key to expanding the ecosystem.

Oracle is licensing their copyrights in all of the Java EE specifications. This includes all of the past work that happened at Sun and BEA, so it is a very large percentage of the overall content of the specifications.

Not all of the Java EE specs are relevant any longer. But many of them (Servlet, JAX-RS, JPA, ...) are fundamental to a huge ecosystem, including a very large percent of existing cloud infrastructure.

Being able to bring these specs forward in a truly open, community-led, vendor-neutral process at Jakarta is massive win for the future of Java.

And yes, I do realize that a PITA migrating the namespace from javax to jakarta will be. I still say this is a huge win.

Oracle is licensing their patents that read on the Java EE specs, under the new Jakarta EE Specification Process. As are IBM, Red Hat, Fujitsu, and the other participants. This is not something that many developers think about…

….but patent safety in specifications is important to enterprises. As is enabling a multi-vendor ecosystem of independent implementations. Those are two things that single-vendor open source frameworks simply cannot offer.

It is one of the reasons why Jakarta is so important to the future of cloud native Java. Safety + choice + competition + innovation are good for customers. And developers.

I certainly have regrets about this process. The fact that it took 18 months is beyond annoying. And I certainly have my share of frustrations with Oracle, as anyone who's read our board meeting minutes can see.

But they have done a lot, and that too is part of the story.

Where we ended up is far better than the death of Java EE, and the complete fragmentation that would have resulted. Because make no mistake, that's where this technology and ecosystem was headed without @JakartaEE

Now the mission for Jakarta is to create an open, passionate community defining the next generation of Java innovation for mission critical applications. E.g. cloud native Java. Finally, the path forward is set. Let’s get going! Stay tuned for further announcements