Oracle Responds to Google's Supreme Court Hail Mary

In what is sure to be the last chapter in the seemingly unending courtroom drama that is Oracle v. Google, Oracle has responded to Google's hail-Mary request, filed with the Supreme Court in January, to review the appeals court's ruling that the Alphabet subsidiary infringed on Oracle's copyrights over its use of 37 Java APIs in the Android OS. In its 46-page petition, Oracle disputed Google's claim that the lower court's decision will harm software developers.

Posted by John K. Waters on April 10, 20190 comments

Oracle's Georges Saab on the Impact of Faster Java Releases

Oracle announced the general availability of JDK 12 last week, which is the third release under its still newish accelerated release cadence. JDK 10 was the first feature release of the new cycle; Java 11, which was released six months later, was the first long-term support (LTS) release. The next LTS release will be Java 17, scheduled for release in September 2021.

Posted by John K. Waters on March 26, 20190 comments

Q&A with Heather VanCura, Chair of the Java Community Process

I last sat down with Heather VanCura, chair of the Java Community Process (JCP), in 2017, roughly a year after she'd stepped up to head the Java language and platform standards organization. A lot has happened in the Java community since then. (I mean, a lot.) Now that some of the dust kicked up by all that change has settled, it seemed like a good time for another conversation.

Posted by John K. Waters on March 13, 20190 comments

Q&A with JCache Spec Lead Greg Luck

The JCP Expert Group in charge of JSR 107, the specification for the Java Temporary Caching API, better known as JCache, recently submitted the maintenance review for JCache 1.1.1. This is just an errata release and not particularly newsworthy, but it marks something of a milestone for the longest running spec request in the history of Java. And it seemed like a good time to talk with its co-author.

Posted by John K. Waters on February 13, 20190 comments

Apache NetBeans 10.0 Release Adds Support for JDK 11, JUnit 5 and PHP

The Apache Software Foundation's (ASF) release of NetBeans 10.0 (incubating) at the end of December launched the venerable Java (now polyglot) IDE into 2019 with a slew of enhancements, including support for JDK 11, the addition of a JUnit 5 library and new PHP features.

The list of JDK 11 enhancements in this release includes:

Posted by John K. Waters on February 12, 20190 comments

Eclipse GlassFish 5.1 Released

The Eclipse Foundation yesterday announced the release of GlassFish 5.1, considered a major milestone release belying the modest increase in its version number. GlassFish 5.1 comprises the full migration of GlassFish and associated Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK) code to Foundation stewardship.

Posted by John K. Waters on January 30, 20190 comments

Google Asks Supreme Court to Overrule API Copyright Ruling

Alphabet's Google subsidiary has petitioned the Supreme Court to review its long-running copyright dispute and re-evaluate a Federal Circuit court's decision that copyright protections extend to software interfaces, and whether, as a jury found, "petitioner's use of a software interface in the context of creating a new computer program constitutes fair use."

Posted by John K. Waters on January 29, 20190 comments

Q&A: Mike Milinkovich on Java in 2018 and 2019

2018 was a year of big changes for the Java community, among which none were bigger than the transition of the stewardship of enterprise Java from Oracle and the Java Community Process (JCP) to the Eclipse Foundation. But that Herculean task wasn't the only Java-related challenge faced by that organization last year. I talked with Mike Milinkovich, who has served as executive director of the foundation for all its 14+ years, about these and other changes, and what he sees coming for the Java community in 2019.

Posted by John K. Waters on January 14, 20190 comments

The JCP's VanCura on Java in 2019

As Chair of the Java Community Process (JCP), the technology standards and specifications organization behind the evolution of the Java language and platform, Heather VanCura has a lot on her plate. She leads the activities of the JCP Program Office, manages the organization's membership, guides spec leads and experts through the process, leads the Executive Committee (EC) meetings and manages the JCP.org Web site. She's also responsible for the Adopt-a-JSR program, organizing hack days and other events, and promoting the overall growth of the membership. She also blogs, tweets and travels the world on behalf of the ever-expanding Java ecosystem.

Posted by John K. Waters on January 7, 20190 comments