Some clarification and roundup over at “java.lang.NullBlogException”:http://www.ktorn.com/roller/page/ktorn/20030808#geronimo_elba_jboss_what_s. Some of its a repeat of what I’ve posted, although it seems a lot clearer now that “Elba”:http://elba.sourceforge.net/ Will not become part of the Geronimo project, but will be a stand-in LGPL EJB stack until a replacement is ready. From the new Geronimo FAQ:

Q: What is Elba?

A: Elba is basically an LGPLed snapshot of JBoss (but not called JBoss to avoid lawsuits). Its not really intended to be developed or enhanced – its a temporary code repository of increasingly shrinking code.

The idea being for the next (say 1 year) Geronimo by itself isn’t gonna be a full J2EE stack. So rather than suffering a Mozilla-style period of lack of use – Elba is a temporary LGPL add-on to Geronimo that Jboss code with Geronimo to provide a full J2EE stack. So from day 1 Geronimo can be used (if so desired) as a full J2EE stack by using the Elba code.

Of course users are totally welcome to just use whats in Geronimo and nothing else. Or they can drop in other existing services if they wish too. So Geronimo is a clean normal Apache project. If need be you can drop the Elba stuff into Geronimo and get a full J2EE stack.

So the “Core Developers”:http://www.coredevelopers.net/ haven’t done anything wrong, and Mark Fleury can be happy. But you just _know_ he won’t be…