Microsoft expands investment in Eclipse Foundation and Java: Azure is the driving factor

Author | Yan Yuanyuan

On July 14, Microsoft announced that it has joined the Eclipse Foundation’s Jakarta EE and MicroProfile working groups as an enterprise and enterprise member of the Eclipse Foundation, strengthening support for Java developers and expanding its participation in the Eclipse Foundation. Jakarta EE focuses on the overall evolution of enterprise Java, while MicroProfile focuses on optimizing enterprise Java for microservice architectures.

“Our goal is to help advance these technologies to deliver better outcomes for our Java customers and the wider community,” Microsoft Development President Julia Liuson said in a blog post. “We are committed to maintaining a vibrant Java ecosystem and the health and well-being of Spring, which uses several key Jakarta EE technologies.”

Joining these working groups is in addition to the company’s participation in the Java Community Process (JCP) “to help advance Java SE,” added Liuson, “We believe our experience running Java workloads in the cloud will be valuable to the working groups, and We look forward to building a strong future for Java with our customers, partners and communities.”

The Eclipse Working Group provides the governance structure for Eclipse projects, enabling organizations (and even competitors) to collaborate on the development of new technologies. The working group provides a set of foundational services, including intellectual property management and licensing, development processes, IT infrastructure and ecosystem development.

1 Azure is the driving factor

According to The Register, the driving factor behind Microsoft’s move is Azure. Over the past few years, Microsoft has invested heavily in the support of Java and related technologies, including Jakarta EE, MicroProfile and Spring technology on Azure, by working with strategic partners such as RedHat, IBM, VMware and Oracle.

Now that so much has been invested, the logical next step is to have a seat on the working group. Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation, said: “We are delighted to have an influential organization joining the Jakarta EE working group.

Currently, Microsoft is improving support for running Quarkus on Azure, including on emerging platforms such as Azure Container Apps. Expanding investments in Jakarta EE and MicroProfile is a natural progression of the company’s efforts to enable Java on Azure, Liuson said. “Our Java on Azure work is fueled by our broad and deep partnerships with key Java ecosystem stakeholders such as Oracle, IBM, Red Hat, and VMware. These strategic partners share our commitment to Microsoft’s The Jakarta EE and MicroProfile journey has been a passion.”

Many Azure services depend on Java.

(Source: Microsoft)

The Register also pointed out in the report that in the case of Jakarta EE, the move means Microsoft is sitting on the same level as companies like Red Hat, while other companies such as Oracle and IBM are in strategic member seats.

Back in 2016, Microsoft joined the Eclipse Foundation as a Solutions Member and became a Strategic Member in August 2021. Among other privileges, strategic members have a seat on the Foundation’s Board of Directors, the Architecture Committee, and have expanded board voting rights on key aspects of the Eclipse ecosystem, including licensing, development of governance policies, and amendments to membership agreements and bylaws.

2 About Jakarta EE and MicroProfile

Jakarta EE was formerly known as Java EE. In August 2017, Oracle decided to hand over Java EE (Java Enterprise Edition) to the open source organization, and in November of the same year, Java EE was announced to be handed over to the Eclipse Foundation.

However, Oracle’s additional condition is that open source organizations are not allowed to use the name of Java. Subsequently, Wayne Beaton, director of open source projects at the Eclipse Foundation, publicly stated on GitHub that the Java EE project needs a new set of canonical names from the new community, so Eclipse chose Out of “Jakarta EE” and “Enterprise Profile” two follow-up by name, in the end the former won with 64.4% of the votes.

MicroFile, on the other hand, provides a set of specifications designed to help developers build enterprise Java cloud-native microservices.

The main goal of MicroFile is to define a set of enterprise Java APIs to optimize the development of cloud-native microservices. These APIs were originally JavaEE standards and extended with those useful for the microservices pattern. Of course, as mentioned above, Java EE has been replaced by Jakarta EE since MicroporFile version 4.0. Additionally, another goal of Eclipse MicroProfile is to keep adding implementations and components.

The text and pictures in this article are from InfoQ Architecture Headlines