Oracle says it is closing down the Kenai.com and Java.net forges next year, so all project data has to be copied elsewhere before then.

While Oracle had already announced back in 2015 that Kenai would close, the understanding at the time was that Kenai projects would simply be migrated to Java.net, essentially merging the two platforms. Code (and associated assets such as bug tracking data, wikis, and email trails) would therefore still have been available if project owners didn't get round to copying it elsewhere. The new plan could see projects disappear. 

The announcement of the closure follows Oracle's decision last year to move the community content of both Kenai and Java.net across to its community.oracle website. At the time, this was said to have been done because community.oracle is a better platform for collaboration. Now Oracle is suggesting developers are better off on Github. In a statement, Oracle said:

"As for the forge half of the site, there has been a tremendous amount of innovation in the code collaboration space, and developers have migrated to a small set of very popular platforms like GitHub. In light of this, we felt we could contribute more value to the community through other programs and by investing in GitHub, because our community is increasingly active there."

The news of the closure has been described as tragic by Java EE guru Reza Rahman. Discussing the news in a post to members of the Java EE guardians, he said:

"This is tragic news for the Java community and very troubling for Java EE. The problem is that Java EE JSRs and GlassFish itself is heavily reliant on java.net."

He continued:

"Oracle so far has not announced a transition plan and is basically asking everyone with java.net projects to do any migration on their own. This is especially troubling since our current projections show Java EE 8 scoped work is highly unlikely to be delivered by April 2017 - which raises the question of how Java EE 8 will be delivered at all."

The Java EE Guardians is an independent advocacy group who support enterprise Java. The post on the Java EE Guardians list follows a discussion in which the draft charter of the guardians was made public. In the charter, the guardians say that there is:

"growing evidence that Oracle is conspicuously neglecting Java EE, weakening a very broad ecosystem along with it. Unless things change soon Java EE 8 won’t be delivered in anywhere near the time when it was initially promised if it is delivered at all."

The charter goes on to say is that while it is very difficult to determine why this neglect from Oracle is occurring, or how long it will last:

"A very troubling possibility is that it is being done because Oracle is backing away from an open standards based collaborative development approach and instead pursuing a highly proprietary, unilateral path."

The news of the closure of Kenai and Java.Net follows concerns raised last year when the head of the Java EE group at Oracle left, followed by Java luminaries including Reza Rahman, a major mover in the Java EE community who had been working as Oracle Java EE community evangelist. 

More Information

Oracle Closure Announcement

Java Guardian's Charter

 Java EE Guardian's Post On Closure

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