A group calling itself Java EE Guardians has posted a Change.org petition that complains about Oracle’s oversight of Java Enterprise Edition (EE). The group is asking Oracle to clarify its plans for the Java EE 8 release and suggests that if it is not willing to keep its commitment to the release it should allow someone else, like IBM or Red Hat, take over control of the project. Its website says, “Our purpose is advocacy, raising awareness, finding solutions, collaboration and mutual support. We believe that together — including Oracle — we can prove that this is the dawn of a new era for an ever brighter future for Java, Java EE, and server-side computing.”
At the top of the membership page for the Java EE Guardians is James Gosling, the creator of Java and a former Oracle employee. “It’s not so much that Oracle is backing off on EE, but that it’s backing off on cooperating with the community,” Gosling said. “Taking it ?proprietary’, going for the ‘roach motel’ model of non-standard standards — ‘customers check in, but they don’t check out.'”