Thursday, May 22, 2008

The JCP at the Paris JUG

Yesterday, I've been invited to participate to a presentation / roundtable about the JCP by the Parisian JUG. Patrick Curran, chairman of the JCP, did a very nice presentation, also introducing the future trends for the JCP.

We then had good questions from the audience:

  • Is there any collaboration effort / alignment between the JSRs?

    • This needs to be improved and will be.



  • What will happen to the JCP if Sun is acquired and/or not interested any longer into Java?

    • First this will unlikely happen.

    • Second, in that case the JCP will turn into a kind of fundation.



  • Is there a special committee in charge of defining what will be in Java SE 7?

    • No, that's a normal JSR.

    • We could have a specific long-term architecture committee for the Java platform later.



  • Why Apache is managing the JDO2 TCK / RI while there is no JSR for JDO 2.0?

    • This is just a maintenance release of JDO2, there is no need for a specific JSR.

    • Collaboration with open source communities is increasing.



  • A question about JNI (I can't remember it, sorry)

  • Is there a TCK framework that can be reused for new JSRs?

    • Yes there is one.



  • What can the JCP do top prevent fragmentation of Java (SWT, SCA, OSGi...)?

    • There is nothing to do, private innovation is norma. In the long-term, once successfull these initiatives could join the specification effort.



  • Java has a long list of old JSRs. Is there a cleaning process?

    • I can't remember Patrick's answer to that one, sorry.



  • Who decide which features are part of Java EE or Java SE?

    • The expert groups in the JSRs.



  • What Sun is doing to develop Java on mobile devices against initiatives from Google and Adobe?

    • Nokia, Ericsson and other major players in this area are already part of the JCP and are leading JSRs.




After a short break, we had the roundtable with Patrick Curran, Antonio Goncalves (co-leader of the Paris JUG), Guillaume Laforge (Groovy Spec Lead), and Cedric Thomas who runs OW2 (Object Web 2.0), the open source consortium. We had a good and animated debate with sharp questions:

  • How to simplify the licensing of TCK

    • Working on it...



  • Are free RIs (reference implementations) a threat for vendors?

    • No, it is not.



  • Do we really TCKs

    • I said, it is rather a tool than a constraint

    • We embed into our own testsuite

    • It helps improving the specification



  • Need for more process for the specification work (timelines, voting rules, etc.)

  • Should performance and QoS be part of the TCK?

    • No the TCK just checks features compliance

    • Vendors will then compare products based on performance, quality...



  • Why Java FX is not defined within the JCP?

    • That used to be a personal initiative, it could join the JCP later.



  • Why Java is the only language with an heavy specification process?

    • Java is not alone, there are numerous IT standardization organizations (400 just in the US according to Patrick).

    • OASIS is another example.



  • Once again a question about Java SE 7...


Then after that good roundtable, it was the time for some beers: we had plenty of time to reinvent the whole IT space.

Thank you to Antonio Goncalves and David for this nice event. Antonio is a talented IT expert and consultant, he is also a member of the JPA 2 expert group, and used to be one of the first customers of Xcalia. He also likes Jaco Pastorius, the legendary jazz bass player, which proves he also has a good taste and genuine values.

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