JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.2 Beta is Available

On Tuesday, we announced our New Development, Distribution, and Support Model for JBoss. As followup to that announcement, we have released the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.2 Beta. Congratulations to the development team and community for helping us pull this Beta together!

You can access the Beta download from the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Downloads page.

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform integrates the following open source JBoss technologies for building, deploying and hosting enterprise Java applications and services:

• JBoss Application Server 4.2
• Apache Tomcat 6
• JavaServer Faces 1.2
• JBoss Clustering, Cache and Messaging
• JBoss Transactions JTA
• Hibernate
• JBoss Seam

This Beta Release represents an opportunity to evaluate the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform before its widespread production release. It is intended as a technology preview in order to allow users to explore its capabilities and evaluate its suitability for their needs. Please deploy it in testing and evaluation environments only.

Your feedback on this technology preview is valuable to us, and is an integral part of making this the most stable Enterprise Application Platform possible. Please raise any concerns that you have or issues that you encounter by opening an issue in our JIRA Issue Tracking System at http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBPAPP. Please bear in mind that the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Beta is a technology preview and will not have a support SLA until its final release.

Driving Developer Preference

JBoss' success has hinged on grassroots adoption by developers and users of our open source technologies. Thank you for your support over the years! With our relaunch of JBoss.org, we are hoping to fuel that innovative spirit further and keep our users informed and excited about our new technologies and directions.

There are many types of developers, of course. While many will download our open source components and tools and support themselves via our forums and wikis, many corporate developers just want a set of solid tools they can use and a well tested platform to develop and deploy on. While they may think innovation is cool...and will factor it into future applications...stability is what gets deployed today. They have a job to do and want vendors like Red Hat to make their lives simpler.

At Red Hat, we are focused on driving preference for our Open Source Architecture as early in the development lifecycle as possible. So, we are building on the grassroots relationship JBoss has with developers and consolidating our developer-related efforts into a single strategy across all of Red Hat.

Towards that end, we have launched the following new subscriptions:

• Red Hat Developer Professional is designed for corporate developers and individuals.

• Red Hat Developer Enterprise is designed for Independent Software Vendors, larger development organizations and mission critical development projects.

• Red Hat Developer Studio is an Eclipse-based development tools environment that integrates tools for Linux, Java, and Web 2.0 application development.

The first two offerings provide full access and developer support for ALL Red Hat certified products (Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise Middleware, etc.) under a single subscription. We want to make it as easy as possible for developers to get access to any/all of our certified bits and support them in the use of those bits as they're developing their applications.

The Red Hat Developer Studio subscription is due out in the summer timeframe and will integrate all of our Eclipse-based tools, including the Exadel Studio Pro and Ajax technologies, into a development environment that works well with and includes our certified platforms. So, developers will not only get the tools but also access to our certified JBoss and Red Hat Enterprise Linux platforms.

This is a first step, of course, and as always, if you have cool ideas for other things we should be doing to help developers, just let us know.

OFF TOPIC: Thank You Sir, May I Have Another

I had the pleasure of spring skiing with my family in Alta, Utah this past week. This was our first time skiing "for real"...meaning taking a lift that brings you up to 10,450 feet.

If you've never skied in April...do it! And if you are looking for a nice place to stay, check out Rustler Lodge in Alta, Utah.

Thank you Rustler...we look forward to our next trip to Alta.

Typical of any vacation, I returned to a ton of emails...but one email in particular caught my eye. The email was from Andy Oliver, longtime JBoss developer now doing his own thing at Buni.org.

Andy read the two blogs I posted on March 31 right before I headed out on vacation. Admittedly, those blogs could have used a bit more editing...but I had a plane to catch and slopes to conquer so I quickly wrote and posted them and put up my "On Vacation" sign.

Anyhow, Andy's email basically said: "Dude....write less!".

Good advice for bloggers in general...and I'd like to thank Andy for the Buni-slap...I really do appreciate the feedback.