A major milestone was achieved this September 2018! The Jakarta EE TCKs are here and finally open sourced! It was long wished for and waited on by many. But what exactly does that mean?
Transparency: Vendors, customers, and the community, in general, can see what passing the tests really means (i.e. they can see the actual tests that are performed and gain better insight into the value of the process). Transparency, of course, extends to development. As new TCKs are developed, the community can monitor, influence, and engage in the process. Transparency is the gateway to openness, improved process quality, and — ultimately — better products.
Openness: Access by a broader community means that there is a greater pool of potential contributors than had existed before. A big part of openness is “leveling the playing field”, with influence and control being determined by a robust governance model and processes. This framework supports open collaboration on new ideas and opportunities, increasing the value of the work. This also means a shared burden.
Shared burden: By opening up the process to new ideas and contributors, we reduce dependency on any single organization or group, and have the potential to spread responsibility for building and maintaining the TCKs.
Vendor neutrality: Reducing dependency on any single organization or group provides us with insurance that the work can progress if that single entity reduces their investment.
The community is already collaborating on driving the TCKs forward. In the first two weeks since the TCKs were moved to the Foundation’s Git repositories, we had 18 commits from four committers from two different companies. This is another step in making the Jakarta EE brand, the future direction of enterprise Java™ technologies and inviting the community to be a part of it.