News

The JCP Gets New EC Members Twitter, Azul; Loses VMware

• By John K. Waters
• November 4, 2011

Twitter and JVM maker Azul Systems are among the new Executive Committee (EC) members, and VMware was among those replaced in the 2011 Fall Executive Committee Elections for the Java Community Process (JCP). Both Twitter and Azul also joined the OpenJDK project.

The ECs are charged with guiding "the evolution of Java," and the JCP promotes the idea that its executive committees should represent a cross-section of "both the major stakeholders and other members of the Java Community."

What the ECs actually do is not insignificant: They pick the Java Service Requests (JSRs) that will be developed, approve draft specs and final specs, approve Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK) licenses, approve maintenance revisions and occasionally defer features to new JSRs, approve transfer of maintenance duties between members, and provide guidance to the Program Management Office (PMO).

Four seats were up for election on the JCP's two executive committees. Twitter and Azul secured seats on the SE/EE EC, which oversees Java for desktops and servers (Java Standard Edition and Java Enterprise Edition). ARM Limited and Daimler Java EE architect Werner Keil (who had been serving on the SE/EE EC) won the two seats on the ME EC, which oversees Java for the consumer and embedded space (Java ME).

Ericsson, Intel and SAP were confirmed for their ratified seats on the SE/EE committee, which also counts among its members Credit Suisse, the Eclipse Foundation, Fujitsu, Goldman Sachs, Google, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, the London Java Community, Oracle, Red Hat Middleware, SAP and SouJava. IBM, Nokia and SK Telecom were also confirmed for their ratified seats on the ME committee, which includes Stefano Andreani, Aplix, AT&T, CableLabs, Oracle, Research in Motion, Samsung, Siemens, T-Mobile, TOTVS and Vodafone.

VMware lost its seat on the SE/EE EC, so did Werner Keil, who promptly gained a seat on the ME EC. Sean Sheedy, a consultant in the mobile application space, and Alex Terrazas also lost seats on the ME EC.

New members take their seats on the committees on November 15.

That's a long list of committee members that could be getting a lot shorter. At this year's JavaOne conference, JCP chair Patrick Curran, was excited by "more competition than we've seen in recent elections." He said he saw that competition as a positive sign that the JCP was healthy and "definitely unstuck."

But Curran also revealed that the JCP aims to merge the SE/EE EC and the ME EC. "It seems like the right thing to do," he said, "that we should have a single executive committee which will deal with all of the three platforms, because it is one platform with three flavors."

The JCP has been pursuing what Curran called "the low hanging fruit," such as a move to increase transparency of the JCP process. But he said the EC consolidation was next on the JCP's to-do list.

I touched base with Azul Systems co-founder and CEO Scott Sellers about his company's win. Without mentioning the organization by name, he brought the specter of long-time JCP EC member The Apache Software Foundation into the conversation. The ASF, readers will recall, quit the JCP last December over disputes with Oracle over a TCK license for its Harmony SE implementation and the ECs vote to approve Java SE 7.

"We are certainly aware of the political nature of serving on the executive committee of the JCP," Sellers said, "and the inevitable frustrations that many in the community have had. But we don't think the right solution is to throw up our hands and walk away. Java is too important, too pervasive, and still has a long way to go."

The full list of nominees for this election is posted on the JCP EC Elections page.