Sun 'Calls JBoss bluff' on J2EE compliance 218
joshmccormack writes "According to c|net's news.com Sun has finally responded to JBoss Group's request for J2EE compliance testing.
Simon Phipps, Sun's chief technology evangelist stated in the article he thinks JBoss Group is bluffing, that their code won't pass the tests, and that some of the code is just copied from Sun."
Go get em JBoss! (Score:5, Insightful)
Compliant or not? (Score:5, Insightful)
But the company asserts that its software is compatible with J2EE because applications written for commercial Java applications servers can be reworked to run on JBoss in a matter of hours or days.
So... what is compliance in this case? It seems to me that if the application has to be reworked and the J2EE standard says otherwise, then there's no issue - JBoss is not compliant? Is that what the J2EE certification actually dictates?
It'll pass, no problem (Score:5, Insightful)
JBoss isn't necessarily as efficient or as fast as the "big 2", but its always first in adapting new versions of J2EE and JSP. JBoss is always on top of new java technology, and doesn't have the vendor specific code that the "big 2", unfortunately, have.
JBoss is really gaining serious popularity in the Java world. Its really a nice product and is true to the "non-vendor specific code" that other app servers claim to have, but don't.
Good news! (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps Sun finally felt some heat from the tech community? (pun intended)
Sounds like a setup to me (Score:5, Insightful)
However, Phipps said he doubts that JBoss software will pass the compliance test. Basing his opinion on public information, he said, JBoss software does not appear to implement all of the J2EE specification.
Sun should already know if JBoss can pass the test since sun already had the test suite and JBoss is freely avaliable. My guess is they were pouring over the spec next to JBoss with a fine toothed comb to find things that weren't implemented and add the to the suite before it is released.
Re:Go get em JBoss! (Score:0, Insightful)
"It's un-friggin ridiculous how damn much IBM..."
I'm going to have to get out the big parsing guns for this one...
"Honestly, I'm surprised IBM charges as much as they do with all the payroll savings they now have from sending jobs over to India"
And this is related... how?
Supporting evidence?
Re:Cruise Missle into Microsoft?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good news! (Score:3, Insightful)
Sun/Phipps needs to show more class (Score:5, Insightful)
A comment like this from Sun is unnecessary and appears childish. This kind of remark is unprofessional and serves no purpose except to build animosity.
What will he say if it does pass? If it does not pass, did his comment serve any purpose except to give JBOSS a reason to believe the test was biased?
Copied Code?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Compliant or not? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who tells you that you can just deploy a J2EE app on any J2EE server is either lying to you, has never used J2EE, or is deploying apps where someone already put in the necessary time ensuring it works on a bunch of different servers.
The current main idea is to isolate the needed modifications to the application deployment descriptors as much as possible, rather than having to change the actual code.
I'm fairly comfortable editing Java code, and don't have any plans to begin making money off of Java code, so it doesn't do much for me. But in a large enterprise where the developers are far removed from the administrators or for a company trying to make money selling closed-source Java, I suppose this element of J2EE could be a big win.
Additionally, J2EE is fairly young in a lot of ways, and continually evolving. The more widely-implemented vendor-specific features will almost certainly gain official support in later versions of the spec, so as time goes on the situation should continue to get better and porting between servers should only get easier.
Still useful (Score:5, Insightful)
How does that help Sun? (Score:5, Insightful)
Evangelist? More irony? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It'll pass, no problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Scenario 1: You want the ability to easily move between servers. You avoid using the vendor specific features of the various servers. Everything works out fine.
Scenario 2: You don't care about moving between servers. You use handy vendor specific feature A and are able to get up and running faster as a result. Again, everything works out fine.
In 99% of cases I'd go for scenario 1, but I certainly wouldn't be pissed to have scenario 2 available to me, just in case.
Re:Sun/Phipps needs to show more class (Score:5, Insightful)
When JBoss doesn't pass (as has been pointed out before... its Sun's test and a free product... so they must already know the outcome), then Sun can say:
"See JBoss is an interesting little diversion, but if you want a REAL J2EE-COMPLIANT APP SERVER, then you need to buy a commercial product."
Undoubtedly, JBoss will fix the areas where they are not compliant. But by the time they do, a new J2EE spec will probably be out, and they won't be able to pass again. Keep in mind that all the major app server vendors define the specs via JCP... so JBoss is necessarily going to always be playing catch up.
Its a pretty smart move by Sun. It keeps them from looking like the bad guy, or "anti-open source", but at the same time serves to marginalize JBoss as a competitor to "legitimate" commercial app servers.
Re:Sun/Phipps needs to show more class (Score:3, Insightful)
"Whadda ya know? Guess we wrote the specs in a way that even amatuers could understand them..." - or some other way to spin Sun/Sun's J2EE into looking better.
If it does not pass, did his comment serve any purpose except to give JBOSS a reason to believe the test was biased?
Biased? Having the JBoss devs play that game would be lame as well. What would be worse for Sun would be the following:
"Fuck. Welp, no sense whining about it.
Now that we know where we're not compliant, break out the code editors, people. Let's fix it all now, and then we can tell Phipps to shove it where the Sun don't shine..."
Soko
Re:Go get em JBoss! (Score:3, Insightful)
I know you were just joking here, but keep in mind that the same question arose when the US automakers began shipping US jobs wholesale to Mexico. The automakers stated that the savings to the company would be substantial. Unfortunately, just because it costs less to make does not in any way put the company in any sort of obligation to lower prices. Nike's that cost $200 at the Foot Locker generally only cost $5 at the most in materials, labor, warehousing etc using cheap labor in SE Asia. Where's the savings going? Into the company's coffers.
Sun Suck (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't know about J2EE, but their J2ME KVM implementation was such bad code that we had to rewrite some of it to get it pass its own test. Terrible C coding practices I've seen in this VM when we were writing our own code based on their standards to work in sillicon.
Me think they're ashamed that open source software like JBoss are quicker to adapt and evolved according to the needs of their users than Sun could ever be with all their corporate bullshit they spread like jelly.
GO JBOSS! Give them hell
Re:Copied Code?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Go get em JBoss! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like a setup to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Sun probably does know. If you were Phipps, would it be better to simply proclaim that JBoss is not compliant and create an Open Source "martyr" or merely suggest it isn't and let the JBoss Group prove you wrong?
Personally I doubt it is actually compliant. The test suite is very thorough and pokes around in obscure areas of the various specs, some of which are ambiguous. The big vendors spend a lot of time massaging their products to comply with the spec with the benefit of the licensed test suit at their disposal. JBoss hasn't had this luxury. They'll need to go through this process before all the light turn green. Don't be surprised if it takes the JBoss Group a year to get there.
I don't blame Sun for withholding certification from JBoss. They have managed to get powerful vendors to sign on to the J2EE platform based on the promise that there is a payoff in terms of licenses. Now that these big vendors have established a credible market for the platform, Sun can let JBoss play and provide a low cost point of entry. Had a "free", certified compliant implementation existed early the big vendors may have thought better of it. Sun now wants JBoss compliant because it makes the platform stronger to have a solid low-cost implementation.
JBoss is not threat to the big J2EE vendors. Implementing a single server side class in J2EE requires writing at least three separate bits of Java code for the home, remote and bean interfaces/classes. There may also be local variants of these to overcome marshalling overhead. XML metadata must also be maintained. This is for a single EJB. If you have many EJBs, you have a very large number of source files and bits of metadata that must be kept in sync. The big commercial vendors sell tools that make this easy. You can do it with vi, but you don't want to. If JBoss is really compliant and really as good as its hype, the vendors will just incorporate it into their own products, just like they did Apache. Their "value add" still remains, because JBoss does little or nothing to relieve the sheer development burden of distributed J2EE development (aside from good dynamic deployment.)
J2EE is now technically credible and supported by real vendors with real products. Now Sun wants to make it cost effective by allowing JBoss to compete after getting its certification ducks in a row. Wise move.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Cruise Missle into Microsoft?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bringing up Mono supports his point.
Re:Compliant or not? (Score:3, Insightful)
J2EE is just a spec. The devil's in the details...
Who needs a J2EE container (Score:1, Insightful)
So why would anybody care about this whole fight between Sun and JBoss. Sun hypes stupid EJB technology and JBoss is trying to cash on this hype. I have no sympathy for either one of them.
More OSS ignorance (Score:2, Insightful)
OSS may not pass everything the first time, but telling it what it doesn't pass just hastens its compliance, and it will inexorably march toward it.
OSS development is like the gentle ocean and the sandcastle: it takes a while, but the sandcastle will fall, and once the tide turns, it doesn't matter how many people are rebuilding the castle.
It might Fail (Score:2, Insightful)
There are reasons why JBOSS might fail the compliance test. However these reasons are beacuse the spec is idotic, such as unnecessary ro even crippeling of synchronization in certain functions. So failing might be a good thing in some areas.
old fashioned "hello world"-defence (Score:2, Insightful)
System.out.println("Hello world");
}
How much code does it take to be identified as "stolen"?
Re:Sounds like a setup to me (Score:2, Insightful)
>business applications from within an integrated
>environment.
Actually, you can't. As an architect/project lead, I find that no greater than 50% of developers can actually be expected to write a business application of acceptable quality without intense supervision. I do share your assessment about J2EE tools, though. As a
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Difference between now and then though is that the blue collar people could at least retrain to white collar. If the white collar goes away, what exactly is left?
War industry and aerospace (almost the same thing really) will be my guess for our future.
Re:Compliant or not? (Score:2, Insightful)
This allows us to catch incompatibilities quickly, before they become problems later on. If our unit tests won't pass on both Tomcat and Websphere, then the code doesn't go in.
If we ever need to port to another appserver (e.g. Weblogic), it shouldn't be a problem as we already have code that works on two different J2EE (or almost J2EE in the case of Tomcat)-compliant app servers.
Re:Who needs a J2EE container (Score:1, Insightful)
having used both jboss and Sun One (Score:2, Insightful)
That and Sun pushing EJB's for everything when they are designed for serious transactional applications. For non-transactional applications, 75% of the time you're better off cooking your own simple caching/pooling mechanism.
Tempest in a Teapot (Score:5, Insightful)
I love JBoss. I use it daily. I even contributed some patches to it back in the 2.4.4 days. I like
Sun stuff. I use it daily. The company I work for is a Sun iForce Partner (we're also and MS partner, in case you think I'm realy biased). I look at this issue, and read the above article (which I was pointed to on the JBoss forums, ironically) and I see two sets of people acting incredibly childish. I won't say the two companies or organizations, because I know there are people on both sides of this issue that don't share these opinions. So Sun won't certify JBoss? Big woop. I'll still use it. So will most of the developers I work with. And we'll still use it for dev and then port to BEA or OC4J because it's easy to do (Websphere bites and is incredibly hard to port to...yet certified!). If JBoss "goes beyoind J2EE" and doesn't support the standard anymore (J2EE 1.4 in the future, it complies to 1.3 as far as I can see), I will stop using it.
Period. End of story. I'll use OC4J...not open source but free for development and certified. It's also easy to use.
I don't give a rat's ass about AOP, or even JMX or micro-kernel crap. I care about writing EJB's (Session not entity...we've discovered Apache OJB),JSP's and servlets to the J2EE standard that are easily moved from one app server to another. I care about using the latest features of the spec. As soon as I can't do that, I'll stop using that server. If JBoss goes to far beyond J2EE they will lose. If they don't like the current spec, maybe they should get involved with the JCP to affect some change, like Apache.
As for Sun folks thumbing their nose at JBoss, perhaps they should remember that without JBoss, there would be hundreds of thousands less J2EE developers out there and likely
Given that, and the exchange in the above article, maybe I'll switch to Jonas or OpenEJB (or another Open Source server if it exists).
This whole thing is ridiculous. Stop whining and start working to beat out
Re:Cruise Missle into Microsoft?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not that I would argue.
(BTW I know several people who own Hummers, both real ones, and that Cheby POS. And I was reffering to all of them above)
Shows SUNs sincerity to OpenSource (Score:2, Insightful)
All they want is an 'under control' J2EE that is Tomcat, and everyone else making money. Doesnt matter Jboss outperforms Websphere. They dont realize Jboss's success as J2EE will proliferate Java as a language as well as an alternative to
Re:Open Source Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Because if JBoss is not compliant, nobody will use it. The fact that it is open source is a really poor argument for not needing standards compliance. Should GCC's cc be non-ANSI C since if you needed it to be ANSI C you could just open up the source and make it conform? The Apache HTTPD server is compliant to the HTTP spec. Tomcat is a reference implementation of a servlet container.
There's an ocean of difference between being able to access the source code and being able to effect changes to that source code. Open source should conform to standards.
Sun is two faced..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How does that help Sun? (Score:1, Insightful)
Certification is a big deal for the small players (JBoss and commercial) -- the big guys like BEA etc have enough mindshare that they don't need it.
Re:Go get em JBoss! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cruise Missle into Microsoft?? (Score:2, Insightful)
At the moment, the entry to J2EE is pretty well blocaded by the $$$,000 that IBM and BEA are charging. So companies will invest in the initially cheaper MS environment.
If there is a "portable" (and hence more preferable) solution available, and it stacks up cheaper, then it will hit MS as hard as it hits IBM/BEA...
Human effort as commodity (Score:2, Insightful)
We have *always* been a commodity. It's only recently that USians and other participants in Western-style societies have been faced with the reality of competing with the real world.
As it was with the whole crypto discussion some years ago, so it is with being intelligent: Ths US and other industrialized societies have no monopoly on intelligence. Lots of people are smart, and they are beginning to compete in the world marketplace for such services.
JBoss HAS to be certified!!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it the Java expert? No.
Is it the Database Expert. No
Is it the Security expert? No.
Is it the Netowrk expert? No.
Is it the monkey-ass MBA? Damn strait!
If a F500/1000 company is going to use JBoss and hire the JBoss consultants, it will be at the recomendation of some MBA. It will be hard enought to get it in there since JBoss is not out taking them to Hockey games or buying rounds of golf. It has NOTHING, NOTHING, to do with the technical merrits of the software. This, my fellow techies, is why Open Source is having a difficult time.
Well, three reasons...
No marketing
No "Tech support"
nobody to sue if things go wrong.
JBoss would upset the apple cart (Score:4, Insightful)
So what happens if JBoss gains credibility through licensing? Well, the cost model gets turned on its head. If the incremental software cost is now $0 instead of $10k for each additional CPU/Server, you can now consider multi-CPU Wintel boxes, or even clusters of low-end commodity server hardware.
Suppose you go "cheap" with a Sun 280R, list price $13k, with BEA Weblogic, ~$10k = $23k for the solution.
Now, suppose it takes only 2 $3k Dell servers to attain equivalent performance - total cost is $26k by the time you add 2 CPU licenses. It's both cheaper and simpler to go with one server.
Turn it around now, for the JBoss case:
Sun Fire 280R = $13k total cost
And suppose that it now takes *4* of those $3k Dell servers to attain equivalent performance. Your total cost, $12k, is still $1k cheaper. For what you were paying before, you could have 7 of these servers, and spare change to boot.
It seems to me that Java isn't a huge money makes (nor a huge money loser) for Sun, it is merely a means to the end of driving Sun hardware sales. Change the J2EE cost model, and the plan is toast.
EJB = Enterprise Java Bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)
JDO/Castor are much better solutions for most databse applications. EJB proponents tell you that the EJB servers take care of resource, pooling/managemnet, big deal... making resource pool/resource management is what 3rd graders do for computer science. Why these EJB "architects" thinks such simple stuff is so hard to do is beyond me.
Now the EJB proponenent's savior tool is EJBDoclet and XDoclet these days... Use of XDoclet type of tools for writing code is just plain stupid. In trying to keep Java language "pure" you are now forced to write code in comments, what stupidity? I for one, am glad about the stock market crash, because at least now engineers will make the decisions and not the "architects" who have done nothing but bull shitted their way to the top and failed companies.
Be gone EJBs for ever.