"The 'Professional Open Source' model pioneered by JBoss, Inc. is proving to be a disruptive software model, first in the application server space and now in business process management."

With those words, JBoss chairman and CEO Marc Fleury unveiled the Java Business Process Management (jBpm) project, now renamed "JBoss jBPM." 

The founder and lead developer of the Java Business Process Management Project, Tom Baeyens, is now joining JBoss full-time as the architect of JBoss jBPM and will oversee the evolution of the product.

In addition, Fleury added, JBoss is unveiling a significant upgrade to jBpm 1.0, which has been shipping for a year. JBoss jBPM 2.0 represents a major step forward in functionality, he noted.

Licensed under the LGPL license, JBoss jBPM 2.0 is available at www.jboss.com or www.jbpm.org. The LGPL, JBoss stresses, assures that the software and future versions of the software will always remain free. ("JBoss jBPM is free to download and use regardless of the size of the production deployment. ISVs can embed and distribute JBoss jBPM free of charge and contribute back any changes they make to the source code.")

Based in Belgium, Baeyens started the jBpm project in March 2002 and released v1.0 in December 2003. Inspired by extensive research in process modelling, he designed the jBpm workflow engine with an extensible architecture. He is active in the JSR207 Expert Group (Process Definition for Java).  He will report to Scott Stark, JBoss's CTO.

"jBpm has gained tremendous traction since the project's start more than two years ago, but our success has also made support and services an often challenging task," said Baeyens. "With JBoss behind us, we have the opportunity to take jBpm, now JBoss jBPM, to the next stage of growth and provide a full range of services and support around it."

The JBoss 'Professional Open Source' model, Baeyens continued, enables him to continue working on the project he started, implement the vision he has for it and cement its position as the leading open source workflow management system on the market.

The engine is designed with two main principles, says JBoss. "First, it provides a very simple mechanism to start with a simple state machine, making it easy for Java developers to bundle JBoss jBPM into their projects."

"Secondly, it is designed to scale to the most complex workflow patterns. In fact, JBoss jBPM will be the first BPM engine to support comprehensively the workflow patterns common across all commercial products, enabling it to be used in the most complex Java applications. Moreover, the engine uses the powerful, native jBPM Process Definition Language (JPDL), which was designed from the ground up with the ability to support any standard or specification that exists today or may emerge, including BPEL, BPELJ, BPML, BPSS, ebXML, WSCI and XPDL."

"JBoss jBPM signifies another major step for JBoss," said Marc Fleury, "as we continue to build out a complete open source middleware platform of loosely-coupled projects - all backed by enterprise-grade services and support."    

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