Java/J2EE and the future..
Not a whole lot of traffic on the Debian NP list lately, so here's a
topic of discussion to stir things up: J2EE.
Briefly stated, in my professional opinion, J2EE is currently the best
tool around for writing business software. In turn, this means that
it is also the best tool around for writing Free Software for
non-profit organizations.
I personally have thoroughly investigated every possible non-Java
option for the "next generation" of my own project, InfoCentral,
which is currently written in PHP. Nothing compares to J2EE--in fact
not even close. Not Python tools. Not PHP tools. Not Perl tools.
Please note that I do not aim to bash these wonderful languages--they
all have their purpose and do it very well. However, at this time,
they are not the right tools for the job of developing
highly-scalable, professional enterprise applications. (as opposed
to simple, lightweight web applications, aka. LAMP) I do not have
time for a lengthy technical discussion of the deficiencies of other
solutions, but it suffices to say that compared to J2EE tools
feature-for-feature, the 'competition' is either immature or missing
altogether. For example, there is nothing close to an alternative to
EJB or JTA and the rough equivalents to such tools as JNDI and RMI
are far less mature. Even in the web arena, JSP and Servlets now
outperform and out-feature the PHP, Perl, and Python standbys.
A quick browse of Freshmeat will also verify the current tide in the
direction of J2EE. *Every* professional, open source business
application with any sense of meaningful progress and success is
being written utilizing Open Source Java and J2EE tools. Examples:
Open for Business, OhioEdge, Compiere
So why do I bring this up on the Debian NP mailing list? Because it
concerns Debian very strongly. There is one problem with using J2EE
today: even though all the J2EE tools required are Open Source, a
proprietary Java JDK is still required, whether Sun's or IBM's. As a
result, all this great new software being developed is inaccessible
to the Debian project. I have chosen J2EE for the future of
InfoCentral and thus it too will sadly be inaccessible to Debian-NP.
It is fully understandable why -- Debian is a freedom-purist distro
and I commend it for taking this stance. But a solution is needed.
Debian NP will be worthless if the software that non-profits's need
is not available.
The solution is this: We need to support the GNU ClassPath and the
various JVM projects like Kaffe and SableVM to help bring them to
modern Java standards compliance. Once they are, Java/J2EE will be a
completely Debian-friendly platform.
Chris Gebhardt
InfoCentral lead developer
Relevant Links:
http://www.infocentral.org
http://www.jboss.org
http://www.ohioedge.com
http://www.ofbiz.org
http://www.compiere.org
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