To help assure the compatibility of J2EE implementations, Sun Microsystems has developed a Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK). In addition, Sun offers a branding license to J2EE implementations that wish to claim compatibility to the J2EE standards. In November, 2003 Sun released J2EE 1.4, and with that release for the first time allowed open source implementations to license the TCK on a stand alone basis. At that time, JBoss, Inc. became a TCK licensee and committed to pass the test.

The TCK is an extensive set of over 23,000 tests. The testing takes a very large commitment due to the size, lack of automation, and errors in a testing package of this size. JBoss enlisted the assistance of our J2EE Certification Founding Partners Atos Origin, Borland, Hewlett Packard, Iona, Intel, Sonic, Unisys, and webMethods. JBoss began work on this effort in January, 2004 and completed the full testing on JBoss 4.0 by the end of June, 2004, which is a very aggressive timeline. Much of the time went into setting up and configuring the tests and understanding the nuances of the tests. Not surprisingly, there were only relatively minor changes made to the JBoss code base JBoss has been used by many customers as a defacto reference implementation for several years. The primary areas where new functionality was needed were in CSIV2 security for IIOP, a JAXR implementation, and the addition of a new web services implementation.

JBoss, Inc. and our J2EE Certification Founding Partners are pleased that we have passed this significant milestone becoming the first Open Source implementation in the market to pass the J2EE 1.4 TCK. This brings our customers and partners and development community the assurance that Professional Open Source is a safe choice for deployment of your applications.

NOTICE FROM SUN MICROSYSTEMS: Any redistributed derivative work of the software licensed hereunder must be compatible and branded with the appropriate compatibility logo specified by Sun and licensed by Sun pursuant to a separate Trademark License required to be executed by you with Sun. Redistribution of the software licensed hereunder must retain this notice.

NOTICE FROM JBOSS, INC. The notice from Sun Microsystems does not in any way affect the LGPL license or impose additional conditions on the LGPL license.

ADDITIONAL NOTICE FROM SUN MICROSYSTEMS: This version of the JBoss Application Server source code is made available in support of the open source development process. Some numbered or tagged revisions of this source have been tested and found to pass the Java™ 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE™) Compatibility Test Suite, and you can find information on which revisions or tags at www.jboss.com. Please note that since only binaries can be tested, source code cannot be described as a compatible implementation of the J2EE Specification. The different build environment on your machine and any changes you may make to this code could render your resulting build incompatible. Because of this, writing or deploying applications to builds based on this code can lead to lack of portability. You should instead consider deploying production applications on the pre-built binaries of the JBoss Application Server that are available at www.jboss.com that have been tested and certified to meet the J2EE compatibility requirements.