Java no longer free

After years of offering Java for free, Sun Microsystems introduced a new model to the Java line that is fee-based, says internetnews.com.

While all the old editions will remain, for enterprises looking for extra support, there is now the Java Platform Standard Edition for Business.

This product subscription platform is designed to offer more than double the time Sun will offer support for each platform release, provide faster access to technology updates and fixes and offer enterprise deployment features for customers.

Zimbra's ZimbraME (Java Mobile Edition) client and source code for businesses is now available, reports Linux.

The ZimbraME client provides Zimbra Collaboration Suite Open Source and Network Edition users worldwide with free access to the Zimbra experience with e-mail and calendar on mass-market Java-enabled mobile phones.

This extends Zimbra's reach of services to the broadest range of devices available in the market and builds on Yahoo's e-mail and mobile Web services and as a key starting point for consumers.

In a lively but lighthearted debate at TheServerSide Java Symposium in Las Vegas last week, advocates for frameworks such as JavaServer Faces (JSF), Spring MVC, Rife and Rails battled it out over the merits of the different frameworks available, states Computerworld.

"The sweet spot [for JSF is] for applications that require a complex UI that needs to have serious enterprise integration capabilities," said Sun engineer Ed Burns. "Only the finest patterns and architectures are used," he said.

Standing up for Spring MVC was Keith Donald, a principal at SpringSource Global. "If you use Spring MVC, you can develop applications in a request-oriented style," and supplement them with component-based approaches, Donald said. JSF is a complementary technology to Spring, he said.