While an official Java Specification Request for Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) 6 was approved this week, the vote was not unanimous.The Java Community Process Executive Committee for the enterprise and standard editions of Java voted 14 to 1 to pass the measure, officially known as JSR 316. The JSR now goes through the review process, with Java EE 6 expected to be available in late-2008. The Apache Software Foundation was the lone dissenter while Borland Software did not register a vote. “The Apache Software Foundation’s vote is based on the point of view that this spec lead – Sun – is in violation of the JSPA (Java Specification Participation Agreement),” Apache said in the comments section of vote log. Apache also linked to an April 10 open letter about the issue, pertaining to Apache’s inability to get a license for a Java test compatibility kit for the Apache Harmony open source Java project. Apache said Sun was proposing unacceptable intellectual property restrictions on field of use. The restrictions violate the JSPA, Apache said. While Apache said its vote was not reflective of the technical merits of JSR 316, Apache said Sun should not be allowed to start another JSR until the matter was resolved. Sun in April said the dispute with Apache was over terms. Sun also noted the open-sourcing of Java. Intel in its yes vote said “the spec lead has told us there are no ‘field of use’ restrictions on this implementation of the JSR.”IBM, while also voting affirmatively, said its vote was based on the technical merits of JSR 316 and not on the licensing terms. IBM also expressed issues about JSR 299, pertaining to Web beans. “We are becoming concerned with the direction that JSR 299 seems likely to take in going beyond its stated charter of integrating JSF and EJB components and believe that continued efforts in this direction could warrant its removal from Java EE 6. We do not believe that our customers would find it easy to adopt a Java EE 6 platform that adds yet another component model definition,” IBM said. Software Development