A European middleware consortium called ObjectWeb has
teamed up with Red Hat and revealed that it is in negotiations with
Sun Microsystems to become the first open source Java 2 Enterprise
Edition application server certified as
J2EE-compliant.
ObjectWeb was founded in 2002 to foster the development of a
range of open source middleware. It now includes 35 separate
projects, including Java open application server (JOnAS), which was
launched in 1999.
Red Hat has joined ObjectWeb, which counts Bull, France Télécom
and the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science
and Control (INRIA) among its members.
Red Hat plans to ship a bundled application server as an
enhancement to its Red Hat Advanced Server product, said Red Hat
executive vice-president of engineering Paul Cormier.
The bundle will include ObjectWeb's JOnAS application server,
the Apache Software Foundation's Tomcat servlet container and
Apache Web server, he said.
"We'll be in beta before the end of the year," he said.
This will present open source J2EE server supplier JBoss Group
with serious competition. "What JOnAS now has is a vendor providing
commercial support," said Forrester Research analyst Stacey Quandt.
"It really puts them on the map in North America."
Red Hat's move puts pressure not only on competitive open source
application servers but on the commercial suppliers as well, Quandt
said. "The real impact is not just on JBoss, but also on BEA and
IBM WebSphere. BEA and WebSphere are now being squeezed from the
bottom," she said.
The key question is whether or not the JOnAS software will
become the first open source application server to receive J2EE
certification, an expensive process whose price tag has thus far
helped prevent the JBoss application server from being certified by
Sun.
Sun maintains that JBoss, which is released under an open source
licence but controlled by a for-profit company, JBoss Group, should
have to pay for its own certification. The JBoss Group has insisted
that as an open source project it qualifies for Sun's $3m (£1.8m)
scholarship fund, which pays for the certification of
not-for-profit projects.
Sun has already called ObjectWeb to initiate negotiations on
getting JOnAS certified, said ObjectWeb executive committee
president Christophe Ney, but the two parties have not yet
determined whether ObjectWeb's organisational structure qualifies
it for Sun's certification scholarship programme.
"Superficially, it doesn't look like they can just apply for the
scholarship," said a source close to the negotiations who asked not
to be identified. "But it does look like INRIA can apply for the
scholarship," he added.
Three open source J2EE organisations, JBoss, ObjectWeb and the
Core Developers Network, are now "racing" to get their
certifications done, the source said.
Sun's executive vice-president of software, Jonathan
Schwartz,seemed enthusiastic about the idea of certifying a
not-for-profit application server. "If ObjectWeb is just Apache
with a different face, we'd love to work with them," he said.
Robert McMillan writes for IDG News Service