BEA believes that both open-source projects and commercial Java platform products like WebLogic are crucial to the health of the Java ecosystem. That's why WebLogic runs on top of, incorporates, contributes to, and creates open-source technologies.

Even open-source projects that provide functionality similar to WebLogic tend to be best used in a different part of the Java ecosystem than the one WebLogic occupies.

The Roles of Open Source
To understand open source's contribution to the Java ecosystem, let's look at the many roles it plays. Open source allows the Java community to amortize the cost of commodity technologies as widely as possible. For example, let's look at general-purpose XML parsers. The principles behind designing one are well understood. Therefore, outside of application-specific optimizations, most projects won't be able to differentiate themselves based on the quality of their XML parsers. As such, everyone is better off if the community comes together in an open-source project, produces an XML parser that everyone is free to use and modify, and therefore spreads the cost of developing and maintaining the code across the community.

For this reason, BEA WebLogic incorporates Xerces (a generalized XML parser) and Xalan (a generalized style sheet processor), both from the Apache Software Foundation. By using these open-source implementations, BEA can focus its resources on adding value that customers are willing to pay for, rather than reinventing the (XML parser) wheel.

Open source is also an effective vehicle for lowering the barriers to adoption of new technologies.

BEA is a strong proponent of open sourcing Java Specification Request (JSR) Reference Implementations (RIs) and Java Test Compliance Kits (TCKs). Open source gives the Java community immediate and unrestricted access to the new technologies embodied in JSRs, speeding adoption and ensuring compatibility.

This is why, with the JSRs that BEA is leading - such as JSR 181 for Java Web Services (JWS) files - we will generally make the results available through an open-source license. It is also why BEA and its partners have submitted a reference implementation of the XML Script technology now being standardized in ECMA to Mozilla's Rhino project. XML Script is a new technology that makes XML a native data type of JavaScript/ECMAScript. Rhino is an open-source Java implementation of JavaScript/ECMAScript.

In addition to point technologies, open source has proven itself as a means to develop broader software platforms. Two of the most successful open-source projects, Linux and Apache, are of that type. BEA WebLogic was one of the first application servers to treat Linux as a tier-one platform, and the most popular Web server for "front ending" WebLogic applications has long been Apache. Both Linux and Apache help BEA's customers lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) of WebLogic deployments, while giving BEA engineers unfettered access to the underlying implementations.

BEA WebLogic and Tomcat/JBoss
Open-source application platforms raise the greatest number of questions with respect to WebLogic. Two projects in particular are worth mentioning - Tomcat and JBoss.

Tomcat, from the Apache Software Foundation, provides the official reference implementation for Java servlets - the Web containers for J2EE. JBoss provides an implementation of Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 2.0, the predominant server-side component model for Java.

Both projects are important members of the Java ecosystem. Tomcat has helped ensure the ubiquity of servlets and JavaServer Pages (JSPs) as well as compatibility between implementations. JBoss has made EJBs, formerly the domain of high-end application servers, available to a wider audience, thereby enabling broader adoption of EJBs than would otherwise have been possible.

In comparing these open-source projects to WebLogic, you may find yourself thinking that even if they don't provide all of J2EE or WebLogic's features, at least they're free. However, the cost of the application platform is usually just a tiny proportion of the TCO for an enterprise software project. The majority of the TCO comes from managing and maintaining the application once it has been deployed, followed by the cost of developing the application, and then more distantly by the cost of the application platform software itself. Many of the critical features needed to reduce TCO are not available in open-source projects, so free often turns out to be more expensive than it seems.

In deciding between BEA WebLogic and open-source alternatives for your Java enterprise project, we recommend considering the following areas of competency.

Comprehensive and Tightly Integrated J2EE Programming
The J2EE standard combines the essential elements for building a Java enterprise application - a Web container (servlets/JSP), server-side transactional components (EJBs), remote method invocation (RMI), messaging (JMS), XML processing, Web services, database access (JDBC), connector/adapter architecture (J2EE CA), naming/directory (JNDI), and transactions (JTA). Most Java enterprise projects use a combination of these features. Using a combination of point solutions means having to do additional expensive integration work. WebLogic, however, is a complete and certified J2EE-compliant platform that provides all of these features in one integrated solution.

Development and Deployment Tools
Open-source projects are generally written by experts for experts. This often means that the development and deployment environments tend to be flexible but not very easy to use. While most open-source developers feel comfortable using Emacs and shell scripts, most business application developers want a friendlier, more integrated environment. That's why BEA has spent an enormous effort on lowering the barrier to developing and deploying Java enterprise applications employing a broad range of developer skillsets and across highly distributed configurations. The latest example of this is WebLogic Workshop and EJBGen, which bring J2EE development to a wider range of application developers and substantially cut programming costs.

Reliability, Availability, and Scalability (RAS)
For high reliability projects, Web sessions, Web services sessions, EJBs, messaging services, XML/HTML content, and database connections must offer automated replication, caching, load balancing, failover, and data-dependent routing, just to name a few of the requirements. These features are provided transparently by WebLogic today.

Operations, Administration, and Management (OA&M)
For most projects, the lion's share of TCO comes not from development costs but from OA&M. Understanding this, we've worked to ensure that WebLogic offers the best OA&M experience in the industry. OA&M tools are provided, both directly and through partners, that make it easier to configure and maintain a highly reliable, highly distributed system. But clearly more work is needed. Looking forward, BEA continues to make aggressive investments in new technologies to make WebLogic more self-optimizing and self-healing - moving toward more "lights out" administration of even large WebLogic clusters.

Security Framework
Most Java enterprise projects live in a complex security world requiring Web identity, single sign-on, delegation, integration with third-party security products, and policy-/rules-based authorization of access. WebLogic addresses this by providing a security framework that can handle all of these tasks, including extensive integration with multiple third-party security offerings, while at the same time offering ease-of-use to administrators and keeping the complexity of application security out of the business logic (and the programmer's hair).

Support Costs
Business-critical deployments often require 24x7 support around the world and in the local language. Moreover, commercial vendors often are contractually obliged to ensure that their quality-assurance regimen reflects the diverse range of configurations that their paying customers run in production, including JVMs, operating systems, databases, and third-party technologies (content management tools, development tools, application management tools, security plug-ins, integration adapters, etc.). Quality assurance even extends to interoperability testing with other commercial application platforms (such as that carried out for Web services under WS-I).

Quality of Service and Performance Monitoring
WebLogic provides numerous tools, both directly and in cooperation with its partners, to enable configurable qualities of service across distributed platforms.

Rich Integration and Portal Technologies
Most Java enterprise applications exist in heterogeneous environments that require them to work seamlessly with other enterprise applications and external data, for example, to automate business processes or to provide a unified view of the customer. The BEA WebLogic platform includes Java products such as WebLogic Portal, WebLogic Integration, and Liquid Data for WebLogic to enable this integration.

These criteria are a snapshot of the state of the application server market today. The market is constantly changing, however. Features that were once thought of as the exclusive preserve of high-end application servers such as BEA WebLogic may eventually find their way into open-source projects. As the market changes, the evaluation criteria will change as well.

Conclusion
Almost everyone reading this is developing commercial software. Whether you are a software end user, ISV, or system integrator, you are developing intellectual property (software) that offers a commercial advantage to your employers that they can capitalize on (that is, profit from). In this endeavor, we can and should remain happy to contribute to and leverage open-source.

Because of open source's rich contributions, BEA software runs on top of, incorporates, and contributes to open-source projects. For open-source projects that provide functionality similar to WebLogic, the choice between WebLogic and open source is rarely exclusive. Rather, WebLogic and projects like Tomcat and JBoss serve different parts of the Java community, so deciding which one to use should be done on a project by project basis.

In the end, the story of WebLogic and open source is more about beneficial coexistence than competition.