I’ll be speaking at JBoss World / Red Hat Summit again this year. I’m part of 3 sessions focussed on JBoss :

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Roadmap, Wednesday 2pm

I’ll be sharing our 3-year roadmap and will touch on Java EE 6, HornetQ, Infinispan, support next-Gen (aka Cloud) infrastructure. I’ll also go through some of the changes we’ve recently made to our “release taxonomy”. What I expect you to get from the session is a clear understanding of our major areas of focus and the direction that JBoss EAP is heading in so you can better plan your own deployments. I looked at the feedback forms from last year and the only 2 negative comments were “more chairs please” – hopefully we’ll have a bigger room this year but come early.

Andiamo – Towards Operational Excellence with JBoss, Wednesday 5.30pm

Myself, Andy Miller, Brian Stansberry, Jason Greene and Charles Crouch will be holding this BOF session to discuss some of the changes we’re considering for JBoss EAP 6. Generally the discussion will be around operational ease of use, management, monitoring, tuning, diagnostics, deployment. Getting community input at this stage is super important so come along and tell us what you’d like to see. There’s a good chance of beers afterwards

Java 2020

I’ll be sharing the stage with fellow Brit. and JBoss CTO – Mark Little to discuss Java past, present and future and give a Red Hat perspective of some of the challenges and opportunities ahead. We’ll be covering Next Gen. Infrastructure (aka cloud), Multi-language VMs, virtualization, SOA and many other subjects. We may have time towards the end to discuss England’s performance in the World Cup.

If there are questions or areas you’d like to see us specifically cover in these sessions – either leave me a comment or drop me an email (rich dot sharples at my employer dot com) or message (@richsharples).

JBoss World and Summit represents a great opportunity for me to meet some of my colleagues, learn about other technology areas at Red Hat and spend time with customers. As with all tech. conferences – the real value is in the contacts you make and the hall-way conversations you have. I’ll be around all week – if you want to chat – get in touch.

See you in Boston !

Zallinger’s “March of Progress” from wikipedia.

I’ve been part of the Java ecosystem for long enough to see and be part of every Java EE / J2EE release to date. I still have a Forte SynerJ box-set somewhere – we claimed it as the first fully integrated J2EE 1.2 App Server and IDE – that was around 1999 and I was part of Sun for every subsequent release up to Java EE 5.

With the final votes in for Java EE 6 and with the year and decade coming to an end – it seems a fitting time to look back and see how far the Java EE platform has evolved :

• J2EE 1.2 (1999) – announced just short of 10 years ago was the first attempt to create an umberalla specification to cover some existing web-tier, messaging and data access technologies (JDBC, Servlets, JTA, etc.) as well as the new middle tier technology – EJBs.
• J2EE 1.3 (2001) – was from my recollection the first broadly adopted and deployed version, it added Connectors (a standard way to connect to back-end ‘legacy’ systems), some rudimentary support for XML Web Services and a pluggable security layer. EJBs got a major overhaul.
• J2EE 1.4 (2003) – added JMX, a gaggle of specs. to support Web Services (JAXR, JAX-RPC). I think around this time – everyone had written their first App. using EJB’s and had learned that combined with CMP (Container Managed Persistence) they weren’t exactly getting the productivity boost they were hoping for. I think J2EE 1.4 was the “Vista” of Enterprise Java – over-engineered and ultimately underwhelming.
• Java EE 5 (2006) – A name change and some new hope – mandatory XML deployment descriptors gave way to annotations, persistence took a lesson from the de-facto ORM solution – Hibernate. There was an alternative to, ahem, RPC-style Web Services with the inclusion of JAX-WS.
• Java EE 6 (2009) – It’s been a while in the making and had a bad start but after ten years I think we now really see the start of a cohesive platform with a common programming model via CDI (JSR-299) and many of the criticisms leveled at the platform have been answered.

Java EE 6 also defines the new Web Profile – this is essentially a slimmed-down EE focussed on web applications. I think it’s much more than that – I think it’s an opportunity to really redefine the Enterprise Java platform and shed some of the legacy APIs. While the backward compatibility that EE dictates has been good – it’s also contributed to some bloat in the platform.

It’s interesting to see how the size of the Java EE spec. has changed over the years (assuming size of the spec. is a reasonable indicator of complexity)

• J2EE 1.2 weighed in at just 140 pages;
• J2EE 1.3 added about another 25% (174 pages);
• J2EE 1.4 increased it by almost 40% (246 pages)
• Java EE 5 actually bought the page count down by 10%;
• and the last draft of the Java EE 6 spec. I read only added about 6% (236 pages) – despite some pretty major enhancements.

Despite several rounds of consolidation and various acquisitions – vendor support has remained impressive. There were 18 J2EE 1.2 certified servers, and even seven years later there were still 13 (for Java EE 5). I’d be surprised if there weren’t at least 10 vendors supporting Java EE 6 at some point – even after Oracle has assimilated BEA and Sun.

Despite its huge adoption, Java EE and the process by which it is defined (the JCP) has drawn a lot of criticism. Releases have often fallen short of expectations, been perceived as overly complex or taken too long to deliver; but despite the criticisms nobody can deny that Java EE has been a huge success. Java EE is not just a specification – its grown into an entire category of the software industry. I can think of no other technology that has bought so many competing vendors together to define such a broad and widely use platform.

I’m sure the JCP isn’t perfect and I’m sure vendor politics gets in the way of progress from time to time and Sun’s stewardship of Java hasn’t been flawless but step back and try to imagine what our industry would be like without an open and collaborative Java ecosystem. It will be interesting to see whether Oracle take a different approach (as they’ve suggested in the past) when they become the new stewards of Java. Let’s hope hey continue to encourage collaboration and diversity.

The various expert groups that define the Java platform is not, as many suggest, completely controlled by big vendors. My own company Red Hat is not an industry behemoth, there are divisions and offices within companies like IBM and Oracle that are bigger than Red Hat and JBoss, the middleware business unit of Red Hat is only a part of the entire company. Despite that – Red Hat has demonstrated yet again it’s willingness to punch way above it’s weight and has had an influence on Java EE disproportionate to it’s size. Congratulations to Gavin King, Pete Muir, Sacha Labourey. Emmanuel Bernard, etc for tirelessly pushing for simplicity in the EE platform.

JBoss AS 6 Milestone 1 is out and includes some of the key Java EE 6 features. Releases seem to be coming pretty frequently so you’ll see more EE 6 feature appearing over time.

Heiko Rupp has published a guide to writing plugins for JOPR / JON.

It looks like SpringSource had their annual developer event this week; Spring are well respected for their technology – but their marketing team seem to be stuck in 2002 – Andrew Rubinger has a perspective.

Gavin King has an update on the progress of the WebBeans spec. (aka JSR-299) public review – it’s clear that WebBeans will really change the way Java EE is perceived.

Many of the components that comprise JBoss AS 5 and the future EAP 5.0 are starting to coalesce. I’ll write a fuller post over the weekend but here are some of the highlights :

• JBoss Microcontainer 2.0.0 is out
• Hibernate Search 3.1 is out
• JBoss Cache 3.0.1 is out
• JBoss Web 2.1.1 is out
• RestEasy 1.0 beta 9 is out

I promised myself I wouldn’t bite; yet here I am. I’m contributing to the “Here’s what Sun should do meme”. And why not -  I’m as good a keyboard-CEO as the next person and I did work for Sun for almost 9 years.

But first I should note – I think Tim Bray was pretty bold starting this (as he’s still a Sun Employee); and Sun is a pretty unique company in that it’s OK to do what Tim did (assuming Tim didn’t get booted).

#1 Java. I’m part of the Java ecosystem so it’s important to me. Basically, do what James says:

…, at worst go back to SUNW as a stock ticker.”

then do what Tim says :

As for Sun’s role as Steward of Java, and in particular the Java Community Process, let it go already. Java has mostly won and is mostly the establishment, and the community is smart and conservative enough to keep anyone from doing what Microsoft tried last millennium, or in any other way to subvert Java’s interoperability. In 2008, the JCP is costing Sun opportunities and friends and gaining us very little that I can see.

So I’d like Sun to set the JCP free, turn it over to the community, and when we develop some cool Java-based technology in-house, take it to market, try to make some money with it, and after it’s caught on and the bugs are shaken out, consider whether or not it ought to be taken to the JCP.”

But the community is going to have to continue to be smart and I also think that a consortium of interested parties would have to step up and invest some resources in making it work really well. Getting the balance of commercial interest and community is the key – I think Eclipse has it about right. Money makes the world go round – sorry if that offends anyone. Oh and while we’re at it – OpenJDK should be treated like the Linux Kernel – we only need one code base (note IBM and Oracle).

#2 NetBeans

I’ve used both Net Beans and Eclipse (not for a year or two mind) – Net Beans is better, more polished, etc. But it doesn’t matter – it’s not a sustainable product. When Sun stops it’s investment – it will fade away. Eclipse won in mind share years ago; Sun should have recognized this in 2005 – I did. Java needed something like NetBeans in 1999 to attract developers but not anymore.

#3 Solaris

See above. Linux has won. Whatever technical merit Solaris has today will be commoditized next year. The innovation around Linux is relentless.

#4 Middleware

Sun has some great products and technology; some that are popular and fit well with Sun’s demand driven model (eg. Glassfish) and some that make money (Identity Management). Figure out what you need to do #5 – choose the best available OSS solution and run with it.

#5 MySQL

Invest, Innovate. Hire sales people who can sell data-based solutions – steal $1bn from Oracle this year, $2bn next year, repeat.

Demand for storing, archiving, cleaning, replicating and accessing data is going to grow. Forever.

#6 Storage, SPARC, Volume Servers

Keep only what is required for #5.

#7 Open Office

I’m a beneficiary of Open Office – I use it exclusively but have never paid a penny. That’s the problem – I use it because it’s free and it’s the best Office Suite available for Linux. There is no business case here. Thanks for a great product though.

#8 Java FX

Drop it. Nobody will notice.

If this sounds depressing – I’m sorry but it should be clear that Sun isn’t going to be the company it was in 1999. It needs to adjust its cost-model inline with its Open Source strategy; it needs to be much smaller; and needs to do much, much less, much, much more sucessfuly. Even if Sun goes private.

Seeking Alpha has some thoughts on the vulnerability of software companies to reduction in maintenance payments. Read the comments as well. I agree that many companies will scrutinize the value they get from maintenance contracts.

We’ve just launched a new ISV program around our certified platforms. JBoss is everywhere – now we can do a better job of working with the whole JBoss ecosystem. We’re nothing without a healthy, growing and diversified ecosystem of partners.

This graph really puts things into perspective and I really hope I’m not still looking at it in a year’s time wondering where the bottom is.

Finally (finally!!) – Judgment in SCO v. Novell: SCO Loses Again. Who – in their right mind, in the current economic conditions, would be looking to invest in SCO so they can carry on with this nonesense.

Originally uploaded by sharps

With a bit of trimming, a swap-file and a new build – I now have Fedora 10 running pretty reliably on the OLPC. I wouldn’t call it snappy exactly but it’s a start.

Fedora is running off a writeable live image (using a 4Gb SD Card) which also hosts the swap-file. The poor little XO only has 256Mb RAM and is very low powered so having Firefox eat up 40Mb is a problem – might have to find a replacement

I just signed up for the performance testing team as part of the Fedora on OLPC test effort. Now things are up and running reliably it will be interesting to see what tweaks can be made to improve the performance.

If you’re not already too late – there’s a chance to get your hands on a (mostly) free OLPC if you’re willing to commit to some testing of Fedora on the OLPC. I’ve signed up but fully expect my 7 year old daughter to be doing the testing

The mostly free bit is that you have to provide your own 2 or 4 Gb SD card – if you don’t already have one lying around.

Sign up on the Fedora wiki.

Talking of growing communities – interest in JBoss in China is really picking up – there’s a new site dedicated to JBoss – Kava which contains translations of many JBoss related blogs and articles you’d find in North America and Europe.

GNU is twenty five years old this month – and Stephen Fry (English comedian, author, actor, columnist and tech. blogger) has a short video celebrating the event and introducing free software. btw. his podcasts are pretty good as well; if you’re a Stephen Fry fan and enjoy a light-hearted perspective on technology.

This week the Web is aflutter with the launch of Google’s browser – Chrome. Just for the record – I don’t think that Microsoft will win this browser war – give it 3-5 years and IE users will be in the minority – they’ve failed to innovate at the pace of the competition (Firefox) and haven’t established a Mobile Web foothold; and their desktop monopoly is finally being challenged (by OS/X, Linux and the mobile web). The thing is – IE won’t be the only victim in this war – other’s will get caught in the cross-fire – I think Safari will go down pretty quickly – probably within a year of Chrome being ported to the iPhone. Firefox (the only browser I’ve used for as long as I can remember) will be next. That bothers me – but only a little – that’s techology evolution – survival of the fittest (despite illegal monopolies). I’m happy for *any* free, multi-platform alternative to IE.

Finally, I think I pissed off a few ex-colleagues at Sun with my recent post. Thing is, I’m right. If you thought my post was overly critical (or wrong) – read this analysis on Forbes.com and try and argue against the fundamental arithmetic. It’s worth repeating my position – I’m not saying that Sun’s OSS efforts are wasted – I’m just saying they won’t save Sun. The projects and the people who’ve pushed them so hard will continue to flourish long after Sun has been dismantled and sold off.

“I wouldn’t be the first to argue that Sun missed the boat by not releasing Java under an open source license sooner. As Apache Project co-founder Brian Behlendorf said in 2006, “I think had they done it, they would have established Java further as the language of choice by so many more people.”

From my very, very minor involvement with the IcedTea project and since joining Red Hat just a few months ago I’ve seen a very different attitude towards Java. I was previously of the opinion (bear in mind I worked for Sun for almost 9 years) that Java was already essentially free and open enough – and that actually making it Open Source wouldn’t really change anything. Java had already become incredibly popular without the advantages of Open Source. But I now think Java did miss a huge opportunity by not being part of the major upstream Linux ecosystems – such Fedora and Debian.

So it almost certainly would have made a big difference 3 or 4 years ago; the question is – will it make a difference now. I’m optimistic – but admittedly slightly biased having invested a large part of the last decade in promoting Java in one way or another. Here’s why I’m optimistic.

1. Java is still young – I still talk to customers who are only just contemplating moving to Java; and I’m still pretty confident that the majority of Java developers are only now working their way through school and college.
2. The only real, mainstream alternative to Java is Microsoft’s .NET platform. And the future of that is somewhat predicated on the success of Vista and Vista isn’t looking too hot right now. OK, Ruby, PHP, Scala, Python all have their place – but  they are just languages and don’t really complete with the Java platform.
3. There’s a real opportunity for one of the Linux distros. to become *the* Java developer OS – right now I would guesss that Windows XP and OS/X account for most Java developers desktops – that just seems completely wrong to me given Microsoft’s and Apple’s disdain of Java.

I feel pretty encouraged by the reaction to our announcement last week and I wouldn’t be surprised if the next wave of innovation in Java came from the new communities who can now adopt it. I for one would love to see one of the major Linux distros like Fedora step up and become the developer OS for Java – and when I say Java; I don’t just mean the language – I mean the entire Java ecosystem.

Bill Burke, esteemed JBoss old-timer and fellow at Red Hat continues to make progress with RESTEasy (an implementation of JSR-311 aka JAX-RS) – if my inbox is anything to go by – this is pretty hot stuff. Get it while it’s hot.

RHEL voted top server OS by channel insider – followed by Solaris 10 and SLES 10 – *nix all the way on the server. RHEL 5 also won a CODIE as did Red Hat’s Directory Server.

The JBoss SOA Platform has had a great start – here’s another customer story – Cybercity selects Red Hat’s SOA platform.