JSR 277 Java Modularization, what is in it for OSGi?

Yesterday I received a mail with the announcement of JSR 277. JSR 277 requirements are a perfect match with the OSGi R4 release. This is the release that I am currently working on. Strangely, the JSR explicitly states that OSGi is not sufficient. True, but that was R3! Interestingly, it criticises the Framework using the exact words that were written by Richard S. Hall, our invited researcher since last year. Richard has been working hard, together with Glyn Normington and Jeff McAffer, to make those very words become very untrue. So we talked immediately reacted. Richard warned his community and many mails flurried back and forth. At least Richard will be on the JSR expert group and so did several other people.

Interestingly the JSR is from the J2SE/J2EE site while the OSGi has its origins more in J2ME. However, OSGi R4 has been given many features that make it applicable for more general application/web servers. For example, R4 allows different versions of the same packages to reside in the same VM and it therefore supports many mechanisms to influence the choice for the right exporters. We find that modularization is at least as important for the J2ME world as it is for the J2EE/J2SE world. It would be great if there was only one standard for this area.

I am not sure what the JSR will mean for OSGi, that will depend very much on what the goal of SUN is. Are they looking for a good solid solution? The OSGi Alliance has been working on this for 7 years now and have a solid spec. Or will this become another battle for control and license fees? I'll keep you posted.

  Peter Kriens

posted by Peter @ Thursday, June 16, 2005