On 26th February Jakarta EE was chosen as the new name for Java EE. So what does this mean for the JCP? Who will define and approve the specifications? How will Jakarta EE be versioned? All these questions and more, I attempt to answer in this post.

1 Specification

Jakarta EE specifications will be defined by the Jakarta EE Working Group and approved by the Specification Committee. The Java Community Process (JCP) will be responsible for the Java SE and Java ME specifications only.The Eclipse Enterprise for Java (EE4J) top-level project will release Eclipse Glassfish as a Java EE 8 compliant implementation.

2 Versioning

The next version of Enterprise Java will be Jakarta EE 9 and it will use Java EE 8 as its baseline version.

3 Implementations

Versions of Jakarta EE 9 should be implemented by Eclipse Glassfish, Apache TomEE, Wildfly, Oracle WebLogic, JBoss, and IBM Websphere Liberty and use the Jakarta EE logo.

4 Migration

The process of migrating Java EE to the Eclipse Foundation has been in full swing for several months and will continue until all projects are moved over.

5 Name Changes

There have been some name changes so here’s a table that summarises those changes.

Old Name	New Name
Java EE	Jakarta EE
Glassfish	Eclipse Glassfish
Java Community Process (JCP) ¹	Eclipse EE.next Working Group (EE.next)
Oracle development management	Eclipse Enterprise for Java (EE4J) Project Management Committee (PMC)

¹  The JCP will continue supporting the Java SE/ME communities. However, Jakarta EE specifications will not be developed under the JCP.

Interesting Links

Java EE has a new name… The announcement of the Java EE name change

And the Name Is… Mike Milinkovich’s article about the name change

On Naming, or Why EE4J Does Not Suck Mike Milinkovich’s article about the EE4J project

Java EE to Jakarta EE Tomitribes Support for Jakarta EE name change

Mike Milinkovich’s Tweet on which this post is based