What is JBoss (WildFly)?

JBoss stands for JavaBeans Open Source Software.

JBoss is a Java EE application server. It is also the name of a company that is now a division of the Red Hat corporation. And yes, JBoss is the owner of JBoss (hum?). Maybe that’s why they’re changing the name of the product to WildFly.

JBoss = WildFly

Whatever you call it, this is a cross-platform JEE implementation that can be used in any operating systems that supports Java and runs a certified JVM.

Licensing

JBoss was written in Java and licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, which means that it is a free and open source software.

Although JBoss itself is free, Red Hat charges for the support subscription for JBoss Enterprise Middleware.

A little bit of history

The project was started in 1999 by Marc Fleury, and was first named EJB-OSS (Enterprise Java Bean Open Source Software). Sun Microsystems request that the EJB trademark was not used, so it was renamed to JBOSS, and later JBoss.

Versions

The latest released version is JBoss AS 7.1 (February 2012).

WildFly 8 will be the direct continuation to the JBoss AS project.

References:

https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/AS7/Documentation

http://www.jboss.org

Videos:

JBoss AS7 -The Next Generation - http://youtu.be/W5sqWPM2gpQ

Operations,Administration & Management of JBoss AS7 - http://youtu.be/1ML6_PmYycM