Dimitrios Gianninas, rich Internet application developer at Optimal Payments Inc., said his company in the past year has moved to replace several commercial Java tools with open-source tools. Gianninas is not attending JavaOne.

For example, the Montreal-based electronic payments processor is replacing its Enterprise JavaBean components with the open-source Java-based Spring framework. The company has also replaced BEA Systems Inc.'s Java-based WebLogic Workshop development tools with Xfire, an open-source Java service- oriented architecture framework, Gianninas said.

"In all these cases, we've found that these open-source solutions are simple to use and implement \[and] give us more flexibility," he said. In addition, the open-source tools are often built by Java users "who have encountered the same problems as us and thus know what we need and work toward providing better tools for us," Gianninas noted.

Chris Scheuble, co-owner of The Scheuble Group, an IT consulting firm in Sacramento, said that the spread of open-source technologies can also help IT managers better determine whether engineers have the skills needed for a project.

"It is more simple to ask potential employees if they know JBoss' \[business process management tool] rather than asking if they know business process management methodologies," said Scheuble, who also is director of the Sacramento Java Users Group.