The Jakarta Project creates and maintains open source software for the Java platform. It operates as an umbrella project under the auspices of the Apache Software Foundation

Apache Software Foundation

The Apache Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation to support Apache software projects, including the Apache HTTP Server. The ASF was formed from the Apache Group and incorporated in Delaware, U.S., in June 1999.The Apache Software Foundation is a decentralized community of developers...

, and all of Jakarta products are released under the Apache License

Apache License

The Apache License is a copyfree free software license authored by the Apache Software Foundation . The Apache License requires preservation of the copyright notice and disclaimer....

.

Subprojects

Major contributions by the Jakarta Project include tools, libraries and frameworks

Software framework

In computer programming, a software framework is an abstraction in which software providing generic functionality can be selectively changed by user code, thus providing application specific software...

 such as:

• BCEL
  Byte Code Engineering Library
  The Byte Code Engineering Library is a project sponsored by the Apache Foundation under their Jakarta charter to provide a simple API for decomposing, modifying, and recomposing binary Java classes . The project was originally conceived and developed by Markus Dahm prior to officially being...
  
   - a Java byte code manipulation library
• BSF
  Bean Scripting Framework
  The Bean Scripting Framework is a method of allowing the use of scripting in Java code. It provides a set of Java classes which provides support within Java applications for scripting languages, and also allows access to Java objects and methods...
  
   - a scripting framework
• Cactus
  Jakarta Cactus
  Cactus is a simple test framework for unit testing server-side Java code from the Jakarta Project. The intent of Cactus is to lower the cost of writing tests for server-side code. It uses JUnit and extends it...
  
   - a unit testing framework for server-side Java classes
• ECS - The Element Construction Set is a Java API for generating elements for various markup languages.
• HttpComponents- The Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol.
• JCS - JCS is a distributed caching system written in java.
• Apache JMeter - a load- and stress-testing tool.
• ORO - Java package.

The following projects were formerly part of Jakarta, but now form independent projects within the Apache Software Foundation:

• Ant
  Apache Ant
  Apache Ant is a software tool for automating software build processes. It is similar to Make but is implemented using the Java language, requires the Java platform, and is best suited to building Java projects....
  
   - a build tool
• Commons - a collection of useful classes intended to complement Java's standard library.
• HiveMind - a services and configuration microkernel
  Microkernel
  In computer science, a microkernel is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system . These mechanisms include low-level address space management, thread management, and inter-process communication...
  
  
• Maven
  Apache Maven
  Maven is a build automation and software comprehension tool. While primarily used for Java programming, it can also be used to build and manage projects written in C#, Ruby, Scala, and other languages. Maven serves a similar purpose to the Apache Ant tool, but it is based on different concepts and...
  
   - a project build and management tool
• POI - a pure Java
  Java (programming language)
  Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
  
   port of Microsoft's popular file formats.
• Struts
  Apache Struts
  Apache Struts is an open-source web application framework for developing Java EE web applications. It uses and extends the Java Servlet API to encourage developers to adopt a model-view-controller architecture. It was originally created by Craig McClanahan and donated to the Apache Foundation in...
  
   - a web application development framework
• Slide
  Jakarta Slide
  Slide is an open-source content management system from the Jakarta project. It is written in Java and implements the WebDAV protocol. Slide is a set of APIs to implement the WebDAV client. Because of this, Slide can also be seen as a Content Management Framework. The use of WebDAV, which is a...
  
   - a content repository primarily using WebDAV
  WebDAV
  Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning is a set of methods based on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that facilitates collaboration between users in editing and managing documents and files stored on World Wide Web servers...
  
  .
• Taglibs - Repository for JSP custom tag libraries.
• Tapestry
  Tapestry (programming)
  Apache Tapestry is an open-source component-oriented Java web application framework to implement applications in accordance with the model-view-controller architectural pattern. Tapestry was created by Howard Lewis Ship independently, and was adopted by the Apache Software Foundation as a top-level...
  
   - A component object model based on JavaBeans properties and strong specifications
• Tomcat
  Apache Tomcat
  Apache Tomcat is an open source web server and servlet container developed by the Apache Software Foundation...
  
   - a JSP
  JavaServer Pages
  JavaServer Pages is a Java technology that helps software developers serve dynamically generated web pages based on HTML, XML, or other document types...
  
  /Servlet container
• Turbine - a rapid development web application framework
• Velocity - a template
  Template (programming)
  Templates are a feature of the C++ programming language that allow functions and classes to operate with generic types. This allows a function or class to work on many different data types without being rewritten for each one....
  
   engine

Project History

Jakarta is not directly named after the capital city

Jakarta

Jakarta is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Officially known as the Special Capital Territory of Jakarta, it is located on the northwest coast of Java, has an area of , and a population of 9,580,000. Jakarta is the country's economic, cultural and political centre...

 of Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

, nor after the Jakarta blue butterfly species. Instead, it is named after the conference room at Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

 where the majority of discussions leading to the project's creation took place. This was in turn almost certainly named after the city, which is located on the island of Java

Java

Java is an island of Indonesia. With a population of 135 million , it is the world's most populous island, and one of the most densely populated regions in the world. It is home to 60% of Indonesia's population. The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is in west Java...

.
The JavaWorld article from June 1999 contains more information about Jakarta's history.