In last month's article I wrote about Open Source and Open Standards. This
month, having just returned from the QCon conference
(http://jaoo.dk/london-2008/conference/) in London, during which I discussed
the role of community in the JCP, and particularly the role that individual
("non-corporate") developers could play in the organization, I'd like to
address some other aspect of openness: transparency of process and community
involvement.
Over the past few months I've met with a broad cross-section of the Java
developer community - individual developers, members of the open source
community, Java User Groups (http://java.sun.com/community/usergroups/), and
Java Champions (https://java-champions.dev.java.net/). While some of these
developers belong to the JCP, many do not. This isn't necessarily a sign of
failure. If we had 12,000 members rather than the 1,200 that... (more)
Oracle Session at Cloud Expo
By now I'm sure you're aware that Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems is
complete, and that Oracle is therefore the new steward of Java and the
sponsor of the Java Community Process. It's too soon to say what changes this
may bring, but for an overview of Oracle's Java strategy see the Software
Strategy webcast from Thomas Kurian, Oracle's Executive Vice President of
Product Development. (The Java portion of his presentation starts at the
3-minute mark and lasts for about 10 minutes.)
Register Today and Save $550 !
Explore Sponsorship Opportuniti... (more)
As I recently spoke at the Java Mobile & Embedded Developer Days conference
at Sun's Santa Clara campus, and the yearly Mobile World Congress conference
is held in Barcelona in February, and the majority of the JSRs that have been
active in the past few weeks are in the mobile space, I thought it would be
opportune to focus on Java ME in this month's column.
First, the Developer Days conference. (Quick summary of my presentation:
standards are really important and you ignore them at your peril.) It was
lively and informative - the first such conference organized by Sun's Mobile
... (more)
As I write this article the 2008 FOSDEM (www.fosdem.org/2008/) (Free and Open
Source software Developers European Meeting) is about to start. Of course, by
the time you read this the meeting will be long over (that's the name of the
game with publishing deadlines). I will not be attending, but several members
of Sun's OpenJDK (http://openjdk.java.net/) team are gathering in Brussels to
meet with the movers and shakers of the free and open source software world.
This suggested the topic for this month's column, in which I will explore the
relationship between open source and open ... (more)
In the May issue of JDJ, I wrote about Java and free software in Brazil. This
month, after some recent visits to Europe (to Antwerp for JavaPolis late last
year, to London for the QCon conference in March, and to Paris for a JCP
Executive Committee meeting in May), it seems logical to follow up with an
article about Java in Europe.
Government, Open Source, and Open Standards
Government intervention and direction has long been critical to the
development of the computer industry. The Internet, after all, was derived
from the ARPANET, developed in the early 1970s from a U.S.
gover... (more)