From this otherwise interesting C:Net article about the Sun v JBoss thing, comes the following choice quote:
Enforcing J2EE compliance is important, because IT buyers care about being able to move Java applications to different systems, said Ted Schadler, an analyst at Forrester Research. ...
False. Complete, and utter bullshit. The overwhelming majority of J2EE development is being done in bespoke systems, where the deployment platform is decided a long time before development even begins. Cross-deployment is never an issue. Cross-compatibility of developer skills is important, so you have a bigger pool of development talent to hire from, but developers are far easier to adapt to incompatibilities than software is.
Of course, Schadler backs up quite a way in the next sentence:
... But compliance is generally seen more as a buyer's "check-list item" as opposed to a technological necessity, he said.
"I think the portability question is more important on paper than it is in reality," Schadler said. But "the brand is worth something. If any Tom, Dick or Harry can say that they are J2EE-compliant, that's a problem."
The pundit is having a bet each way. The first line is the party-line, regurgitated from Sun's press-release (this is what ‘analysts’ from places like Gartner and Forrester do: consume press-releases and condense them into research papers). Then comes two sentences of back-pedaling, and then a sentence of back-pedaling from the original back-pedaling. An analytical double-backwards somersault, in the pike position.
The result: a confused, meaningless babble posing as informed commentary.
My take on all this? The J2EE brand is meaningless. Compliance has never been a major reason for choosing or rejecting an application server (trust me on this, I've worked with Websphere since v3.0). Sun have realised that the application server brands: Websphere, Weblogic, Oracle, JBoss, Orion, are all more significant than the J2EE brand itself, and they're desperately fighting for the mark's relevance.
Don't you agree that Sun could market J2EE compativility better if it would put a real J2EE app server in its J2EE RI?
I would be surprised if 95% of the people who make decisions over what appserver to buy even are aware that there is a reference implementation.
On its own, J2EE is a good thing. Standards are good things. I like standards, and I think Java application servers _should_ have a standard to claim compliance with. The problem is that Sun, being a commercial organisation not a standards body, must market that standard and make it a brand they can profit from.
People used to care, in an offhand way, that Linux wasn't certified as a Unix by the Open Group. The Open Group really didn't make a fuss about it, and Linux crept around the edges by calling itself a "Unix-like Operating System". Now that Linux has made huge in-roads on the "real" Unix market, the Unix brand itself is a distraction.
This doesn't mean that Unix itself is a distraction, just that the official Open Group seal of approval was shown up as being an expensive rubber stamp for a bunch of Operating Systems that were never really that compatible with each other anyway.
Sun can see the same thing in its future, and it's scared.
I hear that Apple's (formally Next's) WebObjects is really good. It used to be in Objective C and used to cost $50,000 US, but it is now in Java, most likely to allow advertizing to use that "J2EE-compatible" marketing buzz-word. (And it also costs a whole lot less these days.)
I hear that Apple's (formally Next's) WebObjects is really good. It used to be in Objective C and used to cost $50,000 US, but it is now in Java, most likely to allow advertizing to use that "J2EE-compatible" marketing buzz-word. (And it also costs a whole lot less these days.)