The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), already the dominant player in the Web Server space, is gearing up to take on the J2EE
The project has moved from “incubation” phase to full project status.
“Most people see it as an important milestone in the path to a certified J2EE server,” said Dain Sundstrom, a Geronimo co-founder and community member. “I personally see it as a critical step for the community.”
The Apache Geronimo project began last August in an effort to develop a J2EE certified server that is freely available and licensed under the open source Apache Software License. Developers built Geronimo through the collaboration of a number of open source enterprise middleware groups, including Apache’s own popular Apache Tomcat project.
Sundstrom said the incubation process was key. “Some people wrongly think that being in the incubator means a project is not ready for prime time, which was the case for us. But it is not for all projects,” he said. “In the beginning, we simply didn’t know how to run things and had a lot of coaching from the incubator team.”
Sundstrom said the project is now a separately managed body in
Apache without oversight from the incubator team.
“From the start of the project we have intended Geronimo to simply be the best J2EE implementation,” Sundstrom said, “which means we have put a lot of time into reliability, recoverability, manageability, configuration management and security.”
Though the project is not yet “feature complete,” Sundstrom suggested that end users play around with Geronimo so they can help shape the project. “When we announce this milestone it will mean that the project believes all features required for a certified J2EE server are present and working in the code.”
The Apache Geronimo milestone release is expected later this year.
