Although Java itself was only offered up to open source last month, many open source development projects have arisen around Java already. One of the better known ones, the Spring Framework, will be the subject of a technical conference this week.
The Spring Experience will bring together 400 Spring devotees in Hollywood, Florida to discuss the framework and related technologies. Spring, which was upgraded to version 2.0 in October, has been downloaded about 2 million times, said Rod Johnson, lead developer of Spring and CEO of the Interface21 consulting firm, which oversees Spring. The technology features a Java application framework that reduces development efforts and improves test coverage and quality, according to Interface21.
"There's a thriving community" built up around Spring, Johnson said on Wednesday.
The conference will cover not just the framework itself but the portfolio of open source products bearing the Spring brand, he said. These include products such as the the Acegi Security Framework, which will be re-branded as Spring Security; Spring LDAP, Spring.Net, Spring IDE and Spring-OSGi (Open Services Gateway initiative). These products are in various stages of development, Johnson noted. Spring-OSGi, which enables deployment of application subsystems, is due for a release in the second quarter of 2007, for example.
Spring's success can be attributed to its usefulness, according to Johnson. "I think the reason that people are attracted to it is that it’s a solution that came out of experience and actually works," he said. Spring has the potential to improve return on investment because it can work in a variety of environments, said Johnson, A Spring application running on Tomcat today could be redeployed to BEA Systems's WebLogic or IBM's WebSphere application servers tomorrow, he said.
The technology is being adopted by companies such as BEA, Oracle and Terracotta; grid computing vendors are becoming interested as well, said Johnson.
Meanwhile, the new open source path for Java received Johnson's endorsement.
"We welcome this move. We think it's good that Sun is recognizing the central importance of open source to today's enterprise software. We think that Sun has done a pretty good job to date in its stewardship of the Java language, but involving a broader community has a potential to further increase the penetration of the Java platform and accelerate innovation in the language," Johnson said.
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