I read (or skimmed) JBoss: Administration and Development on the flight down here. JBoss caught my eye because of the recent press about the infighting that is going on in the Java community over JBoss. Aparently (coming from my mostly ignorant point of view) the JBoss open source folks decided to pick parts of Sun's J2EE spec, implement those, create new extensions, and then release the whole thing publically with source.

I imagine this causes several problems in the community - first, JBoss apparently fails some of Sun's "compatability tests" for J2EE. Secondly, JBoss' extensions are apparently getting a lot of use and are becoming defacto standards. Lastly, giving away an apparently good-enough quality J2EE app server is frustrating some of the for-pay J2EE app server vendors (last one is purely my conjecture).

The book was reasonable, I have a basic feeling for what JBoss offers - and I really understand how they feel about Open Source. The book never misses an opportunity to say how great open source is. They also never miss an opportunity to smash on MLet "almost-XML" syntax - something to keep in mind for when anyone is creating a new format.

I'm going to have to re-read the security section, because it was the most unfamiliar to me... I have 3 other books that I want to get through while I'm down here though - Programming Jakarta Struts, Design Patterns (second read), and Test-Driven Development.