Red Hat To Bundle Open-Source Java Tools With Linux Distribution
Red Hat, which expects to release a beta by October, is teaming up with several industry groups to help complete the project.
The company joined the ObjectWeb consortium to contribute to the development of JonAS, an open-source implementation of J2EE, and OpenEJB, an open-source Enterprise Javabeans (EJB) project, said Paul Cormier, executive vice president of engineering at Red Hat, Raleigh, N.C.
Red Hat also will support the IBM-founded Eclipse.org open-source development environment, so it may include Eclipse in the application-development software bundle, Cormier said. It will also continue to work with the Apache Software Foundation on the Tomcat open-source Java application server, he said.
Cormier said Red Hat will not build the development environment directly into its version of the Linux OS, but instead will offer them "layered" on top of the OS so they can be turned on or off depending on a customer's needs.
The plan sounds similar to Sun's plans for its Project Orion, which bundles Sun ONE Java middleware and tools with its Solaris operating system. Microsoft also bundles tools and its .Net Web development platform with Windows, but they are built directly into the system and cannot be turned on or off at will by customers.
Cormier said Red Hat will continue to ship Java virtual machines from Sun and BEA Systems with its Linux distribution "to give customers choice" in how they want to implement Java using Red Hat Linux.
In fact, Red Hat's motivation for bundling a Web application development platform with its Linux distribution is based on customer feedback, Cormier said. "Enterprise customers are asking for it," he said. "This is a natural extension of the [Linux] environment."