|
|
AS OF 5/17/2008 3:56AM EST
|
Java Community in Process of Redefining Itself
By Alex Handy
November 1, 2006 —
In its eight-year history, the Java Community Process has grown and adjusted itself in a distinctly recursive manner: Changes to JCP protocol are designed and adopted through the JCP process. Now, JSR 306—Towards a New Version of the JCP—is working its way through this process, with changes to the way in which licenses for technology compatibility kits are handled during the JSR development process.
In addition, the JCP hopes to optimize the JSR approval and development process to speed creation and completion of new Java features.
At present, JSR teams do not intimate the licensing model of the final specification and its related implementations until the process is complete. The JCP’s next revision should force JSR committees to present licensing requirements along with the initial specification drafts.
Onno Kluyt, director of the JCP program at Sun Microsystems and chair of the JCP, said that the JSR 306 committee is also looking into the role of individuals in the process.
“[We’ll be] looking at the process of joining as an individual, and looking at how an individual can best contribute to expert groups,” said Kluyt. At JavaOne this past summer, the JCP began a more aggressive push for attendees to become members of the JCP and goaded active Java developers to contribute their thoughts and time to JCP endeavors.
This renewed emphasis on the individual’s role in the Java Community Process was influenced by the way open-source software is created, said Kluyt. “The general developer expects most pieces of software are developed with openness and transparency,” Kluyt said. “That approach also is used in APIs and in how specifications are defined. For the JCP to remain a quality standards organization, it has to be able to respond to that expectation.”
INTEROPERABILITY A GOAL
Another expectation that has changed in the Java community, said Kluyt, is that Java work well with other languages.
“Interoperability always played a role in Java, but since the emergence of Web services and the new buzzwords like SOA, enterprises more and more want to be able to integrate stacks of applications. In JSR 306, we’re looking to investigate how we can allow specifications coming out of the JCP to be implemented in a non-Java context,” said Kluyt.
That, he elaborated, means laying out a method for new Java features to be implemented in other languages, like C++ or COBOL.
Kluyt expects that this revision to the JCP will be ready sometime late next year. In the meantime, the entire Java Community Process will be under scrutiny by the JSR 306 team as they search for new methods of improving how Java is revised.
|