wasdev_alex

Well it does a lot more than implement Java EE 6 - providing a JDK, large-scale admin capabilities, programming model extensions etc. But as you see, with liberty we have recognized that many people would like to at least start with a minimal download and we are keeping a strong focus on that even as we deliver additional capabilities.

Debugging is a good reason to provide the source, something we will think about - thanks. We also try hard to make it easy to debug app bugs without having to step into server code, so if you ever have suggested improvements for that we'd love to hear about them (you can post to the form or open requirements at wasdev.net).

We do include a number of open source projects in liberty but having had experience of that over many years with the app server I'd say the main issue is one of backward compatibility (that impacts user apps)... we can control that with our own code (subject to spec changes) but not always with open/community code.

Oh, and in liberty 8.5.5 you can write your own product extensions - features etc - this mechanism is fully supported, so you don't have to deliver all function as applications.

I think it's a combination of stick and carrot. The stick is the end-of-service life (although that has recently grown longer) which means people have to move up (eventually) to remain supported. The carrot is a smooth migration and cool new functions. With liberty there is no longer any migration of server config required - just point the new runtime at the previous config and you're good to go.