The issue of compliance testing is at the heart of the dispute. For vendors to legally claim that their software is J2EE-compatible, their products must undergo a series of tests to ensure that a Java application written for one J2EE application server will run on other J2EE-compatible application servers. In March, Sun extended an offer to JBoss to license the testing suites. But since that time, the two have not managed to negotiate acceptable terms for JBoss to purchase a license and begin the J2EE compliance process. JBoss president and founder Marc Fleury on Thursday said that Sun is "stonewalling" JBoss' efforts to gain J2EE compliance by not returning phone calls made to Sun. But Sun's Saletta said JBoss executives are not sincere in their pursuit of official J2EE compliance. JBoss executives have complained that the cost of performing the coding required to gain J2EE compliance would be very expensive. Saying that the licensing terms for the test suite were "generous", Saletta pointed out that other small companies have paid similar fees. "They're buying time. The longer (JBoss) can get away with this, the more developers move to JBoss," Saletta said. But "developers are getting led down a road where they'll find they're working with a proprietary platform". Fleury said the company ultimately expects to gain official J2EE compliance, because some corporations value the J2EE brand and the application portability. However, he said the "technical value of compliance is zero", and that the brand is losing its cachet as well. Fleury also said that once programmers make full use of the features in JBoss software, they will be "stuck" with code that is not as portable as J2EE-compliant software. "We will take this certification, and we will pass it, because it has become such an issue with Sun that, at some point, we need to take it," he said. "The other reason we will take it is that I do acknowledge that JBoss has gotten a free ride on the (J2EE) brand itself." Apart from the price of the J2EE compliance testing software, Fleury said that doing the work to gain full compliance will be more expensive because of the programming required. That extra development time is particularly costly, because many of the features that Java application servers build into J2EE products are rarely, if ever, used, he said. In JBoss 4.0, only about 20 percent of the code base is actually based on J2EE, Fleury said. Under the company's strategy "Beyond J2EE", JBoss Group has built server software that it says shields Java programmers from learning the complexity of the full J2EE specification. JBoss 4.0 uses aspect-oriented programming to provide the same capabilities of commercial J2EE application servers in a simpler way, according to the company. Typically, programmers need to code to the application programming interfaces of Java application servers to tap into their services, such as transaction management or caching. Fleury said JBoss 4.0 allows programmers who are not proficient in the most advanced Java specifications to build server applications. Developers also can use JBoss 4 to build their own "aspects", or services, provided by the Java server software.
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