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What are the differences in features between Websphere Liberty Core, Websphere Liberty Base and Open Liberty versions?

Apart from the Websphere Liberty ones requiring a license, of course and Open Liberty being the 'upstream' open-source project, of course.

Do Websphere Liberty Core and Websphere Liberty Base require different licenses? I found some comparative graphs showing that Core equals roughly to web-profile (so, no MDBs or JCA, for example) while Base equals to full-profile (and there is also ND with collective support), but they seem a bit outdated.

Does OpenLiberty currently include all the features available in Core / Base / ND but without commercial support?

David G.
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As to your question about WebSphere Liberty Core and Base, the information you found is not outdated. It is quite accurate. There has not been changes in that area in how Liberty features are divided up between Core and Base. You can see more details in the Liberty "periodic table" that is included on slide 32 here

Regarding Open Liberty, it does NOT include ALL of the features that are available in WebSphere Liberty Core, Base and ND. For instance, none of the ND features are available with Open Liberty. There are other WebSphere Liberty specific value-add features that are not in Open Liberty that are more legacy features that were purposely chosen not to be in Open Liberty since they are not strategic features or have been stabilized, for instance. Additionally, there are value-add features that were decided to require commercial support and not made available as open source. Another key difference is that WebSphere Liberty includes EE6 Web Profile features, where Open Liberty only includes EE7 features and above. When Open Liberty was created 5 years ago, there was little value seen in having the EE 6 Web Profile features be part of Open Liberty since EE 7 and EE 8 had been available for so long and most customers would be at those levels if they wanted to use Liberty or if they wanted any of the full profile features.

I hope that helps answer your questions.

Jared Anderson
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  • Thanks for the answer and for the link to the slide deck, both are very interesting! I already had read about 'collective' support being only in ND but not on othere levels or Open. About the EE6 vs EE7 issue... I'm not sure I understand the implications... Most applications would work on a higher level spec, right?... or are there EE components 'dropped' on the jump from EE6 to EE7? – David G. Feb 23 '22 at 17:24
  • Searching for official feature lists, I have come across these two links, which I understand would list the table for Websphere core and base versions respectively: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/was-liberty/core?topic=management-liberty-features https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/was-liberty/base?topic=management-liberty-features But both display the same 'core' column. I would expect to see a difference, for example on the JMS or MDB features, as they should be included only in base (as they belong to full-profile spect). @Jared, could you confirm, please? – David G. Feb 24 '22 at 08:33
  • When I look at those links I see a check mark for base, but not for core for things like jms-2.0 for instance so I am not sure what you are referring to that core is marked for jms and mdb. – Jared Anderson Feb 24 '22 at 19:10
  • Many times you can run EE6 apps using EE7 features, or an EE7 app using EE8 features, but there are some changes that are not compatible when changing the major version number for instance, i.e. moving from 1.x to 2.0. Obviously, you cannot run pre EE9 applications with EE 9 features due to the package rename. – Jared Anderson Feb 24 '22 at 19:15