It took two and a half years, but the NetBeans Java-based IDE has finally graduated to Top-Level Project (TLP) status at the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). The popular open source development environment, tooling platform and application framework now comprises the largest codebases at the ASF. (It's 20 years old, after all.)
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Posted by John K. Waters on May 8, 20190 comments
Red Hat has again stepped in to assume the stewardship of OpenJDK projects no longer supported, long-term, by Oracle. The Raleigh, N.C.-based open source solutions provider and long-time Java community leader has taken on the role of steward of OpenJDK 8 and OpenJDK 11 update releases. Red Hat will "work with the community to enable continued innovation in Java," the company said in a statement.
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Posted by John K. Waters on April 24, 20190 comments
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.
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Posted by John K. Waters on April 10, 20190 comments
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.
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Posted by John K. Waters on March 26, 20190 comments
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.
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Posted by John K. Waters on March 13, 20190 comments
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.
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Posted by John K. Waters on February 13, 20190 comments
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:
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Posted by John K. Waters on February 12, 20190 comments
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.
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Posted by John K. Waters on January 30, 20190 comments
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."
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Posted by John K. Waters on January 29, 20190 comments