Open Sourcing Java EE

March 2018


Java EE has been the most successful set of open standards with rich ecosystem of vendors who not only competed each other but also enabled active participation of the community in defining a solid set of core technologies, toolset and frameworks that enriched many enterprise applications. This is what made Java platform’s domination in enterprise technology.

Although Java EE is developed in open source with the participation of the JCP community but many JSR specifications were led by Oracle. This, what many enthusiast including Dr. James Gosling (father of Java) believe that resulted in Java EE having single point of failure thus leading to slow evolution of Java EE and not mature enough to cater the needs of digital transformation initiatives happening in the enterprise technology. It was evident that digital transformation required new features and capabilities that Java EE has simply failed to keep pace and deliver.

Besides, there were other challenges that Java EE was staring at:

  • Traditional 3-tier architecture based platforms such as Java EE was soon becoming obsolete and no longer met the modern application needs such as Agility, Cloud Centric, Microservices, Containerization, DevOps Adaptability, etc.

  • Oracle appear to lose focus on Java EE progress. Java EE 8 was initially planned to be released in 2016 but has been pushed to end of 2017

  • It is often seen that the process that Oracle had in place is not seen as transparent, agile, flexible or open enough, particularly when compared to other open source communities

  • Per Gartner's report, Java EE has seen decline since 2015 indicating shift in the application platform market.

  • Sun Microsystems was pushing to open source Java and Java EE, however the takeover by Oracle put that initiative to back burner

  • Spat between Oracle and Google made people to think if Oracle is attempting to make Java and Java EE, a closed source.

So, it was clear that Java EE has been under crisis and therefore needed special attention. As Oracle continue to lose focus on Java EE, it was essential that they also reduce their authority on Java and Java EE. But many Java enthusiasts feared that this is unlikey to happen and started forking on their own leading to birth of communities such as Java EE Guardians and MicroProfile, consisting of leading developers, designers, architects who are now dedicated to bring Java EE out of crisis.

And, here comes the great news!

This forking in the community and pressure from other developer communities and vendors has made Oracle to realize the importance of Java EE evolution and decided to handover the authority to Open Source community. Oracle has formally announced that they are transitioning Java EE to Eclipse foundation with IBM and Red Hat collaborating on this move. The transition will happen right after the release of Java EE 8 (end of 2017).

Refer to official announcements of Oracle and RedHat.

As part of the move, Oracle intends to do the following:

  • Relicense Java EE spec including RI, tools and project documentation to an open source foundation

  • Participate in the platform evolution but will no longer take the leadership role

  • Define a process to enable open source foundation to govern the evolution of existing specifications and add new specifications to the platform as and when needed

  • Enable developer community and vendors to contribute to the evolution of platform within the open source foundation

  • Facilitate transition as soon as Java EE 8 is released (end of 2017)

Unsurprisingly, this move has brought in positive reactions from various Java EE advocates.

James Gosling, Founder and Lead Designer of the Java Programming Language

I would have been happier if EE had moved to Apache, but I would bet real money that IBM was a mover and shaker here, as they started Eclipse.

Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Ottawa-based Eclipse Foundation to TheServerSide

"We look forward to working with all of the participants in the Java EE ecosystem as it moves to a more open and collaborative development model. As enterprises move to a more cloud-centric model, it is clear that Java EE requires a more rapid pace of innovation. The open source model has been shown time and again to be the most successful way to innovate in today's world. The Eclipse Foundation is focused on enabling open collaboration among individuals, small companies, enterprises and the largest vendors"

Ian Robinson of IBM to InfoQ

IBM is proud to have been one of the platform specification collaborators and implementers since the very beginning and we are delighted that Java EE is moving with the times to an open foundation for its ongoing development following the completion of JavaEE 8 this year. I’m particularly pleased, as a member of the MicroProfile community, to see this movement from Java EE in the same direction

Reza Rahman, founder of Java EE Guardians

I definitely think this is a very positive move…that we should all appreciate wholeheartedly. It is a foundational and promising change for the entire Java ecosystem and perhaps even for global IT. It represents a critical step towards further opening up Java.

Reza Rehman, founder of Java EE Guardians recently conducted a survey on people’s choice of Foundation if Java EE was to be moved outside Oracle. The survey showed that many would have preferred the Apache Foundation, whose contribution has been tremendous to the Java world and has built best of the industry standard platforms and frameworks using Java.