Sun Microsystems has made an important Java compliance test available to JBoss Group--the latest manoeuvre in an ongoing scuffle between the industry giant and the upstart open-source software company.

Sun last week offered JBoss Group the opportunity to license a set of testing tools to see if JBoss software adheres to the Sun-sanctioned Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) specification, said Simon Phipps, Sun's chief technology evangelist. If the JBoss Group's Java server software passes the compliance test, it can be certified of J2EE compliant.

Marc Fleury, founder and president of JBoss Group, confirmed Wednesday that his company and Sun are talking about licensing and certification but said he commenting further would breach confidentiality agreements between the companies. JBoss Group is a commercial company that provides consulting services around JBoss open-source Java software.

Official certification that Java software is compliant with J2EE is important to both software companies and their customers.

One of the key draws of standardized software is that corporations are not tied to a single vendor. For example, a company that creates a billing application using J2EE software and tools should be able to run that program on any J2EE-compliant software without extensive manual coding.

JBoss's flagship software is a Java application server for building and deploying custom applications. JBoss software is gaining increasing attention, particularly among Java developers, as an open-source alternative to commercial Java application servers.

JBoss Group has not been able to call its software J2EE compliant because it has not gone through the certification tests. But the company asserts that its software is compatible with J2EE because developers that write software for commercial Java application servers can rework them to run on JBoss in a matter of hours or days.

JBoss Group tried for a year to get certification tests from Sun but did not get any reply until last week, Fleury said. In previous interviews with reporters, Fleury had said that Sun was unwilling to make compliance tests available for business reasons.

"Sun has been stonewalling us" on J2EE compliance testing, Fleury said last month. "Do they really want to acknowledge that a compliant server is free?"

Phipps said Wednesday that making the compliance test available will make it clear that Sun does not want to intentionally obstruct JBoss Group's efforts to gain J2EE compliance.

However, Phipps said he doubts that JBoss software will pass the compliance test. Basing his opinion on public information, Phipps said JBoss software does not appear to implement all of the J2EE specification. Phipps also noted that JBoss appears to be using software written by Sun.

"I predict that now that we're calling their bluff, they will make up another excuse for not doing the tests," Phipps said.

Sun and other software companies define the J2EE specification in the Java Community Process. In technical committees, companies hammer out agreed-upon additions to the J2EE specification, which serves as a blueprint to write Java server software.

In practice, companies use features, such as clustering, that may tie them to a particular Java server software provider. But Sun and other companies have invested substantially in a common standard and compliance testing, according to analysts.

Copyright © 2009 CBS Interactive, a CBS Company. All Rights Reserved.
ZDNET is a registered service mark of CBS Interactive. ZDNET Logo is a service mark of CBS Interactive.