Rod Johnson, founder of the Spring Framework, leaves VMWare/SpringSource

When Rod Johnson started the Spring Framework back in the early 2000s, he showed J2EE developers that there are better ways to build enterprise Java apps, and he provided the framework to help you do it. Anyone having experienced the pain of developing EJB 2.x beans during this time with it’s clunky api and verbose deployment descriptors and then since worked with the Spring Framework can attest to the huge benefits of developing apps using Spring’s much simpler, lightweight approach. Spring’s success has arguably been a significant influence on the ‘ease of use’ focus for the simplifications and improvements made in EE5 and EE6 in recent years.

Rod recently announced that he’s leaving VMWare to pursue other interests – I wish him success in his future endeavors and thanks for the impact you’ve made to enterprise Java development in the past 10+ years.