Admittedly new to this but I wanted to understand why there is a gap between Red Hat's JBoss EAP project (their enterprise version) and JBoss AS/Wildfly/community project.
Looking at this post from Red Hat, it seems that they don't withhold the source/patches. Makes sense since withholding the source would be a GPL violation, which in spirit wants source distributions so end users can recreate/reuse the binaries.
So if the sources are identical, then why isn't the AS/community version exactly at par with the EAP version? Shouldn't they be bit-exact, like having the same SHA256 value? It appears that the AS/community version usually lags by several hundred patches (from here, "Intro" section)
Talking about the latest JBoss Application Server is always tricky.
Red Hat simultaneously offers two versions of JBoss: community
edition, the current release where is 7.1.1-Final, and Enterprise
Application Platform, EAP, edition where JBoss AS component version is
7.1.3-Final. The difference between these is actually a few hundred bug-fixes, which is enormous …
Since EAP binary distribution is controlled by Red Hat, surely there is enough community interest that the community itself rebuilds and redistributes AS/Wildfly binaries that are at-par with the EAP binaries, right? (a single Maven server should suffice).
I mean look at the popularity of CentOS (the community version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux) – the community IS interested in using software in production without RedHat's blessings/support.
So, what am I missing here?
Best Answer
It looks like all boils down to the differences mentioned on this page
While the community version is mainly used for prototyping and testing, the enterprise version is intended for commercial production use. Due to the service level agreements (SLAs) that are mentioned for the jboss enterprise edition (which centers around the EAP), it is no wonder that commercial customers might require fixes that are not of particular interest for the community edition as the target audience is different.
As the development process is different for both versions, such fixes could be integrated at a later stage into the community edition where the focus lies on different aspects. (e.g. innovating)