Mike @ developerWorks

I recently wrote an article for IBM's developerWorks. It was the first of two articles I've written for IBM. The second one should be online in another week or two. It was a fun experience working with their editors, and hopefully it won't be the last articles I write for IBM.

Both articles have to do with Apache's Geronimo application server. It's obvious to compare Geronimo with the "incumbent" open source Java application server, JBoss. I won't get too far into that. Their architectures are really quite similar. I would say that Geronimo is the more "crafted" of the two. It does less things than JBoss, and it's a little more "stick to the J2EE spec." However, I think when it comes to the standard app server features, it does them a little better than JBoss and it's code is more elegant. I think this is a direct result of it being more of a "true" open source project, where many different developers can contribute. JBoss is much more controlled. If you're not a JBoss employee, you're probably not going to contribute to JBoss.