All,
As I am sure many of you have noticed, progress on the new
specification process has been slow. Unfortunately, I don't think
that situation is going to change soon. This is a problem for all
of us, as Jakarta EE needs to start demonstrating progress if
developers are going to believe that this initiative is real.
At the moment our plan of record is to:
- Release Eclipse Glassfish 5.1 certified as Java EE 8
compatible by the end of September.
- Establish a new Jakarta EE specification process and release a
Jakarta EE 8 specification by December that is identical to Java
EE 8. As part of that we would also release Eclipse Glassfish
5.2 certified as Jakarta EE 8 compatible by the end of the year.
Note that this requires that we have completed an arrangement
with Oracle that will allow us to create specifications using
the existing spec names (e.g. "Java Message Service").
At this moment, I don't think that the second deliverable is
realistic in 2018.
I would like to propose that we rethink our approach in order to
deliver on the elements of Jakarta EE that we can as soon as
possible. A couple of key concepts would include:
- We decide as a group that any product which achieves "Java EE
8" certification can also be labeled as "Jakarta EE 8"
certified. The Jakarta EE trademark and logo is our property. We
can decide how it is used.
- We narrow the focus of version 1.0 of the Jakarta EE spec
process to focus on new specifications, rather than migrating
the existing Java EE ones. That means that while Oracle is
definitely involved, there is far less complexity related to
their interests in protecting the Java trademark via the
existing spec names and javax namespace. So instead of focusing
on some very complex migration issues, let's focus instead on
creating a spec process that would be attractive to
MicroProfile, and JNoSQL, and the like. It seems unlikely that
in the short term we are going to have the permissions that will
allow us to evolve the Java EE 8 platform. So if we're going to
demonstrate any ability to innovate it is going to have to come
from other sources.
With the above in place, our new plan of record would be to:
- Release Eclipse Glassfish 5.1 certified as Java EE 8
compatible, and labeled as Jakarta EE 8 certified as well by the
end of September.
- By <<insert date here>> release a Jakarta EE 9
specification which is [Java EE 8] + [MicroProfile | JNoSQL |
??]. We would avoid the entire concept of backwards
compatibility with Java EE specifications by simply saying that
if a product is certified as Java EE 8 certified and it passes
the TCKs for the additional specifications, it can be certified
as Jakarta EE 9 compatible. Note that I think this means that no
changes whatsoever will be possible to the javax namespace. We
could discuss whether some innovation could occur within
Jakarta's namespace although that would not be backwards
compatible, which is obviously an issue.
I am looking forward to discussing this on the steering committee
call tomorrow.
Thanks.
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