We lost attractiveness - Oracle's delayed decision regarding Java EE 8, then donation to Eclipse, then holding on to Java EE trademark and related activities took really long time. Java EE was popular, because big names were behind it and actively pushing the agenda.
The developers need to stick to something that's not only works but also evolving fastly, brings them joy and job safety.
Jakarta EE 10 is a great achievement but if you compare it to Java EE 8, there are hardly any revolutionary changes. Java EE 8 was released 5 years ago.
What we mostly do is to make sure platform changes don't affect existing user base, instead of thinking mostly how to become the popular again.
What I propose to do is to have just two profiles:
1. Full profile - which is there to support customers who plan to use legacy applications.
2. Core Profile - which is where the exciting staff happens.
We need to do identify specs which does not have future and completely stop investing in them.
We need to combine forces with MicroProfile community, identify the set of specs which are critical to our success and bring them to life under one name as soon as possible.
We need to start thinking how to create good onboarding environment for developers and stop relying on vendors to do that. Jakarta EE starter is the good place to expand, add more documentation, real use cases.
We need to stop thinking that because Spring uses small number of specs, Jakarta EE is standard. Spring will never be Jakarta EE compatible and they could easily remove Jakarta EE reliance in one year if they wanted to.
Other popular frameworks also are not Jakarta EE compatible and if we want them to be, there should be drastic changes in how we do things. With the current process and dynamics I'm afraid in 5 years there will be proprietary frameworks and Jakarta EE as the failed attempt to have standard in Enterprise Java.
