JCP 25-year Anniversary Celebration

On Thursday, I attended the JCP 25th Anniversary Celebration event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. This is the third time the anniversary was held at this location. It was great meeting up with friends in the Java community and having some of the traditional JCP Paella. Of course, there is no anniversary without cake, and this was no exception. Check out the JCP 25th Anniversary cake with Duke frosting.

Heather presented the 21st annual JCP Awards which this year had three categories. Congratulations to the winners!

– JCP Member/Participant of the Year: Frank Greco / Zoran Sevarac
– JCP 25-year Achievement Award: Brian Goetz
– Java in Education Community Award: Devoxx4Kids South Africa (Jozi JUG)

Read about the winners and the justification for their award on the JCP Annual Awards page.

JCP 25-Year Anniversary

The Java Community Process (JCP) was founded in New York 25 years ago, so it only made sense to kick off the 25-year anniversary celebrations when the JCP Executive Committee (JCP EC) met in New York. The JCP EC had its second face-to-face meeting of 2023 in New York this week, this time hosted by BNY Mellon.

Eclipse Foundation has been a proud member of the JCP EC since 2007 as a representative of the Open Source community. I have had the honor of being the primary representative for Eclipse Foundation since 2020. Before that, I held an associate seat on the Executive Committee as an individual.

The 25-year anniversary celebrations will continue all throughout next year. As with previous anniversaries, there will be possibilities for Java User Groups (JUGs) to organize celebration events. More information to come about that in the near future.

Reminder: 2022 JCP EC Elections

Here is a reminder! The 2022 elections for the Java Community Process (JCP) Executive Committee (EC) are in their second week. The ballot will be closed on November 14, only a week away. Don’t wait until the last moment, cast your vote today!

The Eclipse Foundation has been participating in the JCP Executive Committee since 2007 with the primary goal to represent the interests of the open-source community, and for independent implementations of Java specifications.

I am currently the primary representative for Eclipse Foundation on the Executive Committee, and will also be continuing as that if we are re-elected. Prior to that, I served to terms as an individual holding an associate seat.

A Vote for Eclipse Foundation is a Vote for Open Source

2022 JCP EC Elections

The 2022 elections for the Java Community Process (JCP) Executive Committee (EC) have started. The ballot will be open for voting between November 1 and 14.

The Eclipse Foundation has been participating in the JCP Executive Committee since 2007 with the primary goal to represent the interests of the open-source community, and for independent implementations of Java specifications.

I am currently the primary representative for Eclipse Foundation on the Executive Committee, and will also be continuing as that if we are re-elected. Prior to that, I served to terms as an individual holding an associate seat.

A Vote for Eclipse Foundation is a Vote for Open Source

Check the JCP elections website and follow @jcp_org on Twitter for announcements.

Jakarta EE at JavaOne 2022

JavaOne in Las Vegas is just a couple of weeks away. As it turns out, Jakarta EE will have a pretty good presence at the conference. My three Jakarta EE-themed sessions are:

  • Jakarta EE BOF [BOF4038]
    Tuesday, October 18 at 18:45
  • Jakarta EE 10: Simplicity for Modern and Lightweight Cloud Applications [LRN3693]
    Wednesday, October 19 at 15:45
  • The Jakarta EE Panel [LRN3679]
    Thursday, October 20 at 14:30

Make sure to check out all the other Jakarta EE sessions listed in the session catalog. A lot of great topics by great speakers!

On Wednesday, October 19 between 10:00 and 12:00, I will be in the Hackergarten with the Eclipse Starter for Jakarta EE project. Please join me there to work on the https://start.jakarta.ee/. If you are unfamiliar with Open Source and/or the Eclipse Foundation, I will help you get started. This is an excellent way of kick-starting your career within open source.

If you are like me and enjoy a morning run before the conference, then you’re in good company. Please join us for the JavaOne Run (aka Duke’s Morning Run) on Wednesday, October 19 at 06:00. Chad will take us on a 4-mile (6.5km) morning run at a relaxed pace to the new Las Vegas sign and back on the North side of the Las Vegas strip. Check out the details of this, and all the other community activities in the JavaOne Update Series.

CodeMash 2022

CodeMash is a conference I always enjoy very much coming back to, so I was extremely pleased when they decided to have a conference this year despite all that is going on. It really shows that it is possible to arrange in-person events in a safe way.

If I should describe CodeMash in one word, it would be Friendly. It is an extremely good vibe at the conference. It does, of course, help that it is held in the conference center of an indoor water park. The organizers are 100% transparent regarding the organization, budget, and everything else.

CodeMash offers a mentoring program for new speakers. When you get a talk is accepted, you get the question of whether you would consider mentoring a new speaker or be mentored by an experienced one. Since I consider myself pretty experienced as a speaker, I signed up as a mentor this year as well.

I think mentoring programs like this one is an excellent idea and would encourage anyone offered to participate in one to do so!

My talk, Jakarta EE 10 is Coming Your Way! was scheduled for the last day of the conference. Actually to the last time slot before the conference closing session. Usually, I prefer to be scheduled earlier in the program, but I guess that’s how every speaker feels. At CodeMash they have a closing session with a raffle, so there is another incentive for the attendees to stick around rather than beat the traffic on Friday afternoon.

To sum up, CodeMash was an excellent start to the 2022 conference year and I hope to be back next year! I also look forward to speaking at lots of conferences in the upcoming months and meeting up with community members in the conferences-within-the-conference happening at meals, parties, and hallways between and after sessions.

25 Years of Java!

25 years and still going strong! Java is everywhere. It is the #1 programming language in the World. And it continues to evolve! Java has been a part of my entire professional career. Let’s get together and celebrate the past 25 years and look ahead for the next 25!

My #movedbyJava timeline

1996: Wrote my first Hello, World! in Java
1998: Started my professional career as a Java programmer
1999: My first JavaOne
2007: Joined the Java Community Process (JCP)
2013: First time presenting at JavaOne
2016: Became Java Champion
2016: Elected into the JCP Executive Committee
2016: Got a Duke tattoo
2020: Still coding Java

Oracle CodeOne 2019

I am on my way back home from this year’s Oracle CodeOne. As always, this week is so filled with content and activities that it just flies by.

In previous years, I have always had the sort of empty feeling on Thursday (the last day of the conference); the exhibition hall and Groundbreakers Hub is packed away, lunch in the hallways, lots of people walking around with luggage just catching a couple of sessions before heading home.

This year was different. As Ed Burns said in the talk he held together with Phillip Krüger that he found Thursday to be the best day of the conference, to be able to just attend sessions without all the other distractions. And I agree! This year, I listened to great talks from 9 in the morning until 15 in the afternoon with only 15 min breaks between the sessions. No distractions, other than the usual short hallway discussions between the sessions.

and

Jakarta EE 8 was launched the week before CodeOne. Another important milestone for the community! We had a lot of great talks, BOFs and hallway discussions.

The general impression of this edition of CodeOne is that it was smaller than last year. Both in the number of attendees, but also the number of exhibitors. The community spirit, however, was as strong as always!

New Challenges Ahead

I am super excited to announce that October 1st, I will become the first Jakarta EE Developer Advocate at Eclipse Foundation!

So, What’s new? Hasn’t this guy been doing this for years already?

Well, yes, and no. My day job has always been working as a consultant even if I have been fortunate that Cybercom Sweden (my employer of almost 15 years) has given me the freedom to also work on open source projects, community building and speaking at conferences and meetups.

What’s different then?

Even if I have had this flexibility, it has still been part-time work which has rippled into my spare time. It’s only so much a person can do and there are only 24 hours a day. As a full-time Jakarta EE Developer Advocate, I will be able to focus entirely on community outreach around Jakarta EE.

The transition of the Java EE technologies from Oracle to Jakarta EE at Eclipse Foundations has taken a lot longer than anticipated. The community around these technologies has taken a serious hit as a result of that. My primary focus for the first period as Jakarta EE Developer Advocate is to regain the trust and help enable participation of the strong community around Jakarta EE. The timing of establishing this position fits perfectly with the upcoming release of Jakarta EE 8. From that release and forward, it is up to us as a community to bring the technology forward.

I think I have been pretty successful with being vendor-neutral throughout the years. This will not change! Eclipse Foundation is a vendor-neutral organization and I will represent the entire Jakarta EE working group and community as the Jakarta EE Developer Advocate. This is what distinguishes this role from the vendor’s own developer advocates.

I hope to see you all very soon at a conference or meetup near you!

Transitioning Jakarta EE to the “jakarta” namespace

As described in Jakarta Going Forward, we need to transition the Jakarta EE specifications to the jakarta.* namespace/base package. After long and intense discussions in the Jakarta EE Specification, we have proposed two possible ways forward to kick-start the discussions on this thread.

In this post, I am highlighting some of the content of the initial post to the mailing list for reference.

Proposal 1: Big-bang Jakarta EE 9, Jakarta EE 10 New Features

The heart of this proposal is to do a one-time move of API source from the javax.* namespace to the jakarta.* namespace with the primary goal of not prolonging industry cost and pain associated with the transition.

https://www.eclipse.org/lists/jakartaee-platform-dev/msg00029.html

Proposal 2: Incremental Change in Jakarta EE 9 and beyond

Evolve API source from javax.* to the jakarta.* namespace over time on an as-needed basis. The most active specifications would immediately move in Jakarta EE 9. Every Jakarta EE release, starting with version 10 and beyond may involve some javax.* to jakarta.* namespace transition.

https://www.eclipse.org/lists/jakartaee-platform-dev/msg00029.html

Other Proposals

Other proposals should incorporate the following considerations and goals:

The new namespace will be jakarta.*

APIs moved to the jakarta.* namespace maintain class names and method signatures compatible with equivalent class names and method signatures in the javax.* namespace.

Even a small maintenance change to an API would require a javax.* to jakarta.* change of that entire specification. Examples include:
– Adding a value to an enum
– Overriding/adding a method signature
– Adding default methods in interfaces
– Compensating for Java language changes

Binary compatibility for existing applications in the javax.* namespace is an agreed goal by the majority of existing vendors in the Jakarta EE Working Group and would be a priority in their products. However, there is a strong desire not to deter new implementers of the jakarta.* namespace from entering the ecosystem by requiring they also implement an equivalent javax.* legacy API.

There is no intention to change Jakarta EE 8 goals or timeline.

Community discussion on how to transition to the jakarta.* namespace will conclude Sunday, June 9th, 2019.

https://www.eclipse.org/lists/jakartaee-platform-dev/msg00029.html

Contribute

There are already a lot of contributions and lively discussions going on. Please make sure you join the Jakarta EE Platform Developer Discussions mailing list https://accounts.eclipse.org/mailing-list/jakartaee-platform-dev to take part in the conversation. At the time of writing this post, the number of subscribers to the list has more than doubled! Another proof of the passion and commitment in the Jakarta EE community!