… and it is Jakarta EE.

Nearly 7,000 people voted in the community poll. Over 65% voted for Jakarta EE against Enterprise Profile.

So What Happens Now?

Permission is being sought to formally use Jakarta EE trademark. This process is being undertaken by EE.next.

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

What about EE4J?

EE4J was never intended to be the new brand name of Java EE. It’s the top-level project at the Eclipse Foundation under which the source code and Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK) for Glassfish and EclipseLink exist.

How do I Talk About Java EE (or whatever its called now)?

The Java EE name has not gone away. It will never go away as its the certification name for implementations of the Java Enterprise Platform. To say that something is “Java EE”, it would need to have a license from Oracle and to have passed the TCK. There are multiple implementations of Java Enterprise Edition such as Glassfish (the reference implementation), WebSphere WebLogic, and JBoss.

Java EE 5, 6, 7, 8 are still referred as they have always been referred to, but there will be no Java EE 9. Instead, there will be Jakarta EE.

So when you talk about Java EE 8, you are talking about Java EE 8. That’s the version released at JavaOne 2017. If you want to talk about Java EE’s future incarnation, use Jakarta EE.

Name Changes

Here is a table that summarises the name 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.

How Will Jakarta be Versioned?

The first version of Jakarta EE will be version 9: Jakarta EE 9. It will use Java EE 8 as its baseline.

Conclusion

There are still many questions to answer and unknows to address, so caution is still advised. Whatever happens, I am already looking forward to the new dawn that awaits the greatest Java framework I have ever used.

Interesting Links

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