I should also add that HornetQ is released under the Apache Software License version 2.0, not the LGPL as was stated in one earlier comment.

Hello all-

Just to correct a few misconceptions / errors here:

(I'm reposting as first time it seems to have lost my comment)

1) HornetQ is not a "messaging protocol" as the title states, it's a messaging system, a MoM (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message-oriented_middleware), other examples of MoMs are WebsphereMQ, Tibco EMS, ActiveMQ etc

2) HornetQ is a completely different project to JBoss Application Server - it shares zero code with JBoss Application Server. So any comments about JBoss Application Server start-up time don't apply to HornetQ - HornetQ starts up very fast!

3) HornetQ is a rebranding of the JBoss Messaging 2.0 codebase by JBoss. The HornetQ codebase is almost completely different to JBoss Messaging 1.x and the old JBoss MQ codebase, so any comments about JBoss Messaging 1.x or JBoss MQ are not really relevant either, they're different systems.

All of the above are actually explained in the FAQ, but I thought I'd re-iterate them here.

Disclosure: I'm the project lead for HornetQ