Presentation: "The Cathedral, the Bazaar and the Commissar: The Evolution of Innovation in Enterprise Java"
Time: Thursday 16:00 - 17:00
Location: St James's Suite
Now that enterprise Java has passed its 10 year anniversary it's timely to examine the story of innovation in the platform--a story of dramatic change.
In the beginning, vendors built proprietary products such as TopLink that helped to define important functionality, in a traditional "cathedral" model. Open source had little influence on enterprise Java. The emergence of the JCP as the dominant influence on programming model and infrastructure design changed things dramatically. By 2000, J2EE had largely replaced proprietary models as a strategic solution. This grew the market greatly and firmly established enterprise Java, but proved unsuccessful as a source of innovation--indeed, sometimes to stifle innovation. From 2002, open source solutions began to drive innovation in enterprise Java, helping to improve the platform and make users more successful.
Today all three forces of innovation (commercial, JCP and open source) remain important, but the lines are increasingly blurred. Standards create markets; markets enable a flowering of open source; open source in turn influences standards and sometimes supplants standards; the JCP is no longer the sole significant standards body; proprietary software vendors still flourish in some areas; and there are many commercial offerings around open source. Market leading products reflect the influence of all three forces of innovation.
In this session, Rod Johnson will provide an opinionated view of the story of enterprise Java innovation, what it teaches us about the wider industry and the lessons we should consider when making technology choices.