Oracle Donates Java EE to the Eclipse Foundation

Oracle is donating yet another open source technology that it acquired from Sun Microsystems. After discussions with IBM, Red Hat, and a few open source foundations, Oracle has chosen the Eclipse Foundation as the rightful home for the Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) platform.

"The Eclipse Foundation has strong experience and involvement with Java EE and related technologies. This will help us transition Java EE rapidly, create community-friendly processes for evolving the platform, and leverage complementary projects such as MicroProfile. We look forward to this collaboration," said David Delabassee, Software Evangelist at Oracle.

To ensure smooth transition to the new home, Oracle has made certain changes to its proposal.

The company will relicense Java EE technologies and related GlassFish technologies to the foundation. This would include Reference Implementations (RIs), Technical Compatibility Kits (TCKs), and associated project documentation.

Oracle is also recommending a new name and new branding for the platform within the foundation. However, for continuity, the company intends to enable the use of existing javax package names and component specification names for existing Java Specification Requests (JSRs)

Microsoft Is Building a Programming Language for Quantum Computers

At the Ignite Conference, Microsoft announced that later this year it will release a new quantum computing programming language that is very tightly integrated with Visual Studio. The language is designed to work on both a quantum simulator and a quantum computer.

Microsoft has been working on quantum computers for decades. The company hired Michael Freedman some 20 years ago to continue his work on topology. Microsoft's quantum computing work is based on the work Freedman has done over time. Eventually Microsoft has started to see some results of the work it has been doing for ages.

Krysta Svore, principal researcher at Microsoft Research, said that a programming language that can run in a simulated environment will help people understand how to harness quantum power for different types of problems.

One big difference between the work Microsoft is doing on quantum computing and the rest of the industry, is that the company doesn't want to build a quantum computer for display in labs. Microsoft wants to deliver a full-fledged topological quantum computing system.

According to Allison Linn, Senior writer, editor, and multimedia storyteller at Microsoft, it's a system that includes everything from hardware capable of consistently running calculations that require tens of thousands of logical qubits to a complete software stack that can program and control the quantum computer.