Sun Open Sources JES Web Server: An Unusual Historical Footnote
by Sam Dean - Jan. 16, 2009Comments (1)- Related Blog Posts
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Especially if you throw open source into the mix, sometimes a code base can have more lives than a cat. From the Blast from the Past Department, Brian Aker reports that Sun Microsystems has open sourced its JES web server offering as part of the OpenSolaris Web Stack, offering it under a BSD license. Here's the historical point of interest: This was the original Netscape Enterprise Server from the 1990s that folks such as Jim Barksdale and Marc Andreessen rallied behind.
As noted on Slashdot, "almost twenty years later, Apache's original competitor is now made available for anyone to use under an open source license." And Jyri Virkki points out the following:
"This marks another milestone in the very long history of this web server. Back in the 90's this was the Netscape Enterprise Server, which later morphed into the iPlanet Web Server during the Sun|Netscape Alliance. After some years it was renamed the SunONE Web Server and most recently renamed again to the JES Web Server (Sun just likes to keep you confused, thus the constant renaming of the product!)"
You can get the code and build instructions here. Put on some Guns n' Roses or other '90s music while you go get it.Â
