Using JORAM as a JMS component in Geronimo

[Frederic Maistre <fr...@bull.net>]

The question of using JORAM as a JMS component for Geronimo has
apparently been raised a few times. The JORAM project [1], for those who
do not know, is a full JMS 1.1 compliant MOM provided by the ObjectWeb
consortium [2]. It is downloadable as a standalone project, and it is
also integrated within ObjectWeb's J2EE platform, JOnAS [3]. JORAM
provides XA support, and will soon allow full administration through
JMX. The developement of a JCA Resource Adapter is also planned within
the next months.

JORAM not only provides the JMS pub/sub and PTP semantics for performing
local messaging. JORAM is actually built on top of an agent based
programming model and runtime. This makes Joram much more than a mere
JMS implementation, that is a real distributed MOM (compare to MQ
Series) enabling large scale deployments. We even believe that those
advantages make Joram a fitting tool for EAI issues. However this might
not be in the objectives of the JMS/Geronimo team, and we are afraid
that a new JMS implementation approach from Geronimo would discard this
agent part which is important for us.

Having said this, we are quite open to other kinds of collaboration. If
in a first step the Geronimo platform needs a JMS 1.1 implementation, it
is quite possible to get and distribute JORAM 3.5/3.6. If beyond this
step JMS/Geronimo contributors think the agent platform is a good idea,
why not join the JORAM project? It seems to me that the Geronimo
platform could include an ObjectWeb project, in the same way as JORAM
includes Xerces.

Here is now a contribution to the licensing debate. It is true that the
LGPL licence requires contributions to the core software to be under
LGPL also. However is this really an issue ?
-> It does not prevent you from packaging and distributing the software,
or part of it, as is. Several companies have already done that with
JORAM, or with parts of JORAM (e.g. Swift MQ).
-> It does not prevent you to fork the whole JORAM base, and manage the
new project as you wish, except that you must stay in LGPL licensing.
-> It does not prevent you to derive from JORAM work in external
packages, under the licensing policy of your choice, which is quite easy
because of the modular architecture of JORAM.

As a conclusion we would be very happy to welcome new contributors to
JORAM, whether they want to make it part of the Geronimo J2EE project,
or not.

JORAM team.
(mailto:joram@objectweb.org)

[1] http://joram.objectweb.org
[2] http://www.objectweb.org
[3] http://jonas.objectweb.org