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Articles : The Java Community Process :by: Benoy Jose Introduction:Today Java has established itself as a reliable platform for web technologies. It owes a large chunk of its success to contributions both monetary and technical from individual developers and companies like IBM, HP, BEA etc. The unofficial process of contribution until 1998 has been through news groups, technical forums and business partners providing valuable feedback to help build Java. In 1999 sun proposed to form a Java Community Process (JCP) to formalize the contributions from business partners and companies to accelerate the growth of Java and to make it a transparent body providing industry relevant specifications. The attempt is to bring industry experts who know the Java language, business users who eventually use the product, business partners who provide the product to the users and the developers who build the system to a common platform and produce industry relevant and reliable specifications.In this article we shall outline the Java Community Process and its procedures.
Why do we need the Java Community Process?Sun and its partners are in a constant endeavor to improve the language. To keep it current to the needs of the industry, Sun includes changes suggested by the industry and releases minor and major versions of the J2EE spec. The drawback of this approach is the onus falls solely on Sun to keep track of the changes required by the industry and include them in to the J2EE specification. As the user base of Java increased, so did the demands for new features. Different industries either built their own proprietary API's or relied upon open source communities to develop API's for them. This resulted in multiple specifications floating in the market for almost similar technologies. The Java Community Process endeavors to curb this menace and provide a unified and neutral specification extension to all industry players.
Where to Start:If you have a brilliant idea and wish to contribute to the Java community process, you may start with submitting a Java Specification Request (JSR) to the Program Management Office (PMO). Before we go into the details of submitting the JSR lets have a brief overview of the important players in the game.
Executive Committee (EC):The most important group of players overlooking the whole JCP process are the Executive Committee (EC). They consist of prominent members of the Java community who could be individual members nominated for their merit or partner companies that contribute to the growth of Java. These are the people who would eventually guide the evolution of Java. The executive committee consists of sixteen members and a non-voting chair. The members are chosen from Java Community Process members and shall have one vote each. The chair of the committee will be a member of the Program management office. Sun Microsystems will have a permanent voting seat on the Executive committee. Apart from Sun there are ten ratified voting seats and five elected voting seats. These non-permanent members have a term of three years. Companies may have only one person on the EC at any time. If two companies on the committee merge then one member of one of the companies need to give way to a new member.The Executive committee is responsible for selecting JSRs for development within the JCP, approve draft specifications for public review and give final approval to completed Specifications and their associated Reference Implementations and Technology Compatibility Kits. Apart from these duties EC needs to review maintenance versions, coordinate work between members for purposes of maintenance and development and provide the PMO with advice regarding the progress of the JSR.
Program Management Office (PMO):This group is formed by Sun Microsystems and is responsible for the running the JCP. The chairman of the EC is selected from the PMO. The PMO receives the applications for JSR's and does the appropriate forwarding to the different committees.
Java community Process member:This is an individual, organization or company that has signed a one year membership agreement with Sun to participate in the Java community process. This membership carries a fee of $5000/year for commercial entities and $2000/year for educational, governmental or non-profit agencies. However individual members or Java licensees are exempted from this fee. Only a member or a group of members of this group can submit new JSR's.
Experts Group:A group of experts suggested or chosen by the specification lead to shape the content of the new specification. This group typically would be developers working in related fields and members from companies that would eventually use the specification. The experts group has the responsibility to shape and complete the content of the new specifications by working on the proposal provided by the Specification Lead and provide the Reference Implementation and the Compatibility Test Suite. They also choose other members of the experts group and may maintain the specification after it is written, approved and moves to the maintenance stage.
Specification Lead:The Specification Lead is the key person involved in the JSR. He prepares the proposal for the JSR and submits it to the PMO. He also provides suggestions on who should be on the EC. The members of the EC can also be nominated by other members of the Java Community Process. The nominated members are forwarded by the PMO to the Specification Lead.
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