Come To Code 2025

Come To Code is a fantastic community event organized by a very dedicated Linux User Group in beautiful Pignola in the south of Italy. Despite the remote location, it gathered 180 eager attendees. This alone is an impressive accomplishment. The conference had two parallel tracks, as well as track dedicated to human skills.

I did a talk about how to Advance Your Career with Open Source that was pretty well recieved. I had some great questions in the Q&A and interesting conversations after.

The second day started with a panel on Open Source that Rosaria moderated. She also had a talk later in the afternoon, but unfortunatly I had to leave in order to make it to my flight home. In addition to the conference and community, I also got to experience some of the amazing food the region has to offer. I will definitely do my best to come back to the conference and the region again, both for the community andn content, but also for the food. Just take a look at the pictures below, and you’ll understand what I am saying.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #300

Welcome to issue number three hundred of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

In the beginning of this week I was in Madrid speaking and attending at Open Source Community Day 2025 before I continued to Italy for Come To Code in Pignola. I will soon publish a post of the last one. Next week, I am will go to Colorado Springs for dev2next.

We have published a 2.0.0-SNAPSHOT of the EE4J parent pom that contains the configuration needed for publish artifacts using the Maven Central Publishing Portal. Since we don’t have a proper replacement for the staging functionality we had with OSSRH yet, we need to use snapshots this way for now. Hopefully there will be a replacement shortly, or at least before we start the process of releasing milestones and release candidates for Jakarta EE 12.

The vote for adding Jakarta Query 1.0 to Jakarta EE 12 continued in this week’s platform call. A discussion around implications of testing on Java 25 also happened. The Jakarta EE 12 TCK will be executed with at least Java 21 and Java 25.

Open Source Community Day 2025

I had the pleasure of being invited to speak at Open Source Community Day 2025 in Madrid. This two-day event gathered attendees and speakers involved in EU research projects all over Europe. It is not my usual crowd, so it was interesting to see how this community works. I must say that they are an extremely engaged and friendly group of people. There are so much interesting, cool things going on in these projects.

Rosaria Rossini from Eclipse Foundation did a fantastic job hosting the event. In her opening, she emphazied that the objective of the two days were sharing and connecting.

The schedule had ample room for networking in coffee breaks, lunch, dinner, and coctail hours.

I was asked to present something around Java and AI, so I came up with a presentation titled AI in Enterprises – Java and Open Source to the Rescue. During the first day, I realized that most of the projects are evolving around standards and specificaitons, so I changed the narrative a little to include a little history of how Java was open-sourced, and how the standards around it are being developed throught the Java Community Process, OpenJDK, and Jakarta EE.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #299

Welcome to issue number two hundred and ninety-nine of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

The discussions regarding inclusion of new specifications in Jakarta EE 12 continued in this week’s Jakarta EE Platform call. Jakarta Query and Jakarta NoSQL are the most likely candidates. In addition, potentially fold the Jakarta Debugging Support for Other Languages specification into Jakarta Pages was also discussed. Alternatively remove it from the Platform.

Next week, I will speak at Open Source Community Day in Madrid, Spain and Come To Code in Pignola, Italy. The event in Madrid is a two-day event by Eclipse Foundation aiming to bring industry, open source communities, and EU projects together to explore innovation and collaboration. I will present a 15 minute lightning-talk style presentation about Java and AI. Then I will relocate to Pignola in Italy for Come To Code. At this event, I will present an inspirational talk about how contribution to open source can help advance your carreer.

Jalapeño 2025

The second edition of the Jalapeño unconference was held in Cancun, Mexico September 13-14. The intention by having it this weekend was to get the Mexican Java community to be able to bring their family for the long weekend since September 15 is a holiday in Mexico. This didn’t really turn out as planned, so it was a fairly small group that gathered this year. Nevertheless, the sessions were of high quality and touched on a variety of interesting topics.

The sessions were located by, or in one of the pools at the resort. And since we were all staying at the same resord, the conversations continued after the formal sessions during meals and hanging out afterwards.

An unConference is a very social way to hang out with your peers in the community. In our case, the Java community. They usually have a mix of technical, non-technIcal and social topics for discussion. You never know what you get, but everything you get is the right thing. If you have attended an unConferece, you know what I am talking about. If you haven’t had the chance yet, check out the JUnconference Alliance and sign up for one today. They are organized throughout the year at multiple pretty awesome locations.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #298

Welcome to issue number two hundred and ninety-eight of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

This week I attended Community Over Code 2025 in Minneapolis. And, as I am writing this, I am in Cancun for this year’s edition of Jalapeño.

Jakarta EE 12 moves forward toward the first milestone. We are still in the works of finding a good replacement for the OSSRH staging server for maven artifacts. We also started the process of merging the Jakarta EE TCK project in under the Jakarta EE Platform project. This is more of a practical and logistical matter to align with how the other projects are organized.

Last week’s platform call also had a brief discussion around including the new Jakarta Query specification in Jakarta EE 12. Most of the discussion was around how to solve the TCK for this specification. More to come on this topic.

On September 23 and 24, I will be speaking at the Open Source Community Day in Madrid. The title of my session is AI in Enterprises – Java and Open Source to the Rescue. The talk will be about tools and frameworks for AI intergration in Java-based enterprise systems. Check out the agenda, and register for the event if you like to discuss the impact of open source with like-minded peers.

Community Over Code 2025

Community Over Code is a very community oriented conference, and the 2025 edition was no exception. It is by and for the ASF committers and projects. The usual greeting phrase is not “What is your name?” , “Where are you from?” ,or “Where do you work?”, but rather “What (Apache) project are you involved in?”.

The new logo for The Apache Software Foundation was launched in the opening keynote. The feather is now replaced by an oak leaf. You can read all about why an oak leaf was chosen in the blog post Introducing The ASF’s new Logo.

This was my third time speaking at Community Over Code. This year, my presentation The Past, Present, and Future of Enterprise Java with The ASF in the Middle gathered a pretty full room. The conference is not the biggest with its ~200 registered attendees (not all necessarily showing up each day), and with six parallel tracks, having 20 people in the room is fairly good.

The morning before the conference, we went for a morning run in a nearby park. This is a tradition at every Community Over Code. I also had the pleasure of meeting up with Kevin and Jared for dinner on Friday. Kevin also attended the entire conference day. His retirement hasn’t made him rusty as he was able to spot the mistake I did when I got a deployment error in one of my demos during my talk.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #297

Welcome to issue number two hundred and ninety-seven of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

This week I was in Norway for JavaZone 2025 where I presented the talk titled The Past, the Present, and the Future of Enterprise Java. I have done this talk a couple of times, and even if the overall story is the same, the specifics change every time I do it. Next week, at Community Over Code in Minneapolis, I will do it with an angle toward The Apache Software Foundation.

I was not able to join the Jakarta EE Platform call since I was busy at the conference, but from the meeting minutes, I can see that the Milestone 1 of Jakarta EE 12 is shaping up with the details for what the component specifications are expected to do. There is a small challenge as a consequence of the migration from OSSRH to the Maven Central Portal as we haven’t really figured out a good replacement for staging of the specification artifacts. I expect this will be solved in near future.

JavaZone 2025

It’s been three years since last time I spoke at JavaZone, so it was very good to be back this year. The usual venue in downtown Oslo is under renovation, so the entire conference had relocated to Lillestrøm. It is just a 10 minute train ride north of Oslo, so that location is very convenient as well.

The upside of the new venue is that it has more capacity and feels a little more spacious. The rooms for the talks are bigger and more convenient without the steep lectern setup that the old venue had. Overall, I really liked the new location, and wouldn’t mind at all if it became the permanent solution.

This year’s conference had a Roman theme and this really shone through in the exhibition hall. All the exhibitors used some elements aligned with the theme in their booths and the food stalls where accordingly named. Talking about the food. JavaZone is well-known for their food concept. They serve it in the exhibition hall all day long. This means that there are no specific lunch hours with the unavoidable lunch queues. Attendees simply go and grab something to eat whenever they have a break from the talks or feel like a meal or snack.

My talk “The Past, Present, and Future of Enterprise Java” was scheduled for the morning on Thursday. Despite that this was the first slot on the day after the conference party on Wednesday evening quite a few showed up to see this walk through the history of Enterprise Java all the way up to what is in the pipeline for the next versions of Jakarta EE.

The factory that produce the JavaZone Viking Duke has burned down, so there were only a few left. I was lucky enough to get one before they ran out of them. Before the conference on Wednesday morning, I had a short run around the castle and parliament building in Oslo.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #296

Welcome to issue number two hundred and ninety-six of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

The Jakarta EE Platform calls started up again this week after a three week summer break. I see that we have been a bit slow in publishing the minutes. I will try to get that done as soon as possible. The meeting this week was more about catching up after summer while the real “business” starts the upcoming week. The plan is to firm up the contents of the first milestone of Jakarta EE 12.

The Platform project will also start the process of deciding which new, if any, specifications to add to the Platform. The most plausible candidates for addition in Jakarta EE 12 are the Jakarta Query and Jakarta NoSQL specifications with Jakarta MVC lurking in the background.

The CFP for JakartaOne Livestream 2025 is open until September 15. But don’t wait. Submit your talk today!

The upcoming week, I am going to Norway to speak at JavaZone. This will be my fourth time speaking at this conference. The difference this time is that it is not located at its usual spot in Oslo. Since the venue is under renovation, it will be arranged at NOVA Spektrum in Lillestrøm.