ActiveMQ and Artemis are now separate Apache projects. What it means if you run either

For years the ActiveMQ name covered two different brokers, ActiveMQ Classic and Artemis, which shared a project but not an architecture. That arrangement has ended. On 19 November 2025 the Apache ActiveMQ project management committee announced that it had decided to establish two distinct Apache top-level projects: Apache ActiveMQ and Apache Artemis [1].

What changed

• Two projects, two governance structures. Each will evolve independently, with dedicated governance and its own resources [1].
• Artemis has its own home. The project now lives at artemis.apache.org [1], and Artemis documentation that used to sit under the ActiveMQ site now redirects there.
• “ActiveMQ” now means one broker. With Artemis standing on its own, the ActiveMQ name refers to the broker long known as ActiveMQ Classic.

What it does not change

A governance decision does not change a running broker. The split does not by itself force teams on either broker to migrate; the announcement describes both projects continuing independently [1]. Whether to move from Classic to Artemis remains an engineering decision about your workload, not a consequence of the reorganisation.

The practical consequence: “ActiveMQ experience” is ambiguous

The more immediate effect is on language. Classic and Artemis differ in architecture, and operational experience on one does not transfer cleanly to the other — which is why our messaging screen checks that a candidate knows the split and does not assume an answer for one applies to the other. A job spec or CV that says only “ActiveMQ” now needs a follow-up question: which broker, which version, and run in production or not.

The wider point

Open-source reorganisations rarely break running systems, but they do quietly change what words mean. The teams that cope best notice the change in vocabulary early — in job specs, runbooks and vendor conversations — before it causes a mis-hire or a missed advisory.