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