JAX: Do you think enough's being done in core Java development to work towards the cloud? A big question, I know...

MV: It's a big area - they're certainly thinking about, but I guess even the really smart engineers at Oracle and OpenJDK are going into the deep unknown a little bit. We're not convinced all of the right work has been done or right decision are being made. But then again, who does really know? No one's done this before.

Google talks about their Go programming language, which in theory, is being designed for a lot of these problems, but even that hasn't been proven yet either. There needs to be some exploration, and we're hoping the OpenJDK and Oracle are going to be reasonably flexible and try out ideas and use the community as much as possible, to actually test ideas out really early and fail fast. Then go down a direction which will help Java and JVM scale in the cloud than it already does.

JAX: With the London Java Community being on the JCP, are you happy with the progress being made with JCP.next, Martijn?

MV: Very happy with the progress. We set out an internal goal as part of the LJC User Group, of changes we wanted to see, in the standards in general around Java. For us, we're about a good 5-6 months ahead of the curve where we expected to be, so we're really pleased. A lot has been driven by Oracle and the other big vendors, and that keeps surprising people. They want to open things up because I think they realise the value that the bigger they make the pie, the more everyone gets a bigger slice. It's in their best interests.

JAX: Would you like to see more JUGs on the JCP? There's two at the moment in SouJava and LJC - are more needed?

MV: I actually think the balance is quite good with two of us. We did all vote together to reduce the size of standards body. Too many cooks spoils the broth, a decision never gets made. The Executive Committee is being reduced to between 20-25 people. If two are User Groups, or at least representatives from the community, then I think that's a decent representations.

JAX: Adopt a JSR, it's been a year since that initiative started. How's that going and how is it moving forward?

MV: It's going really well. We've actually got a whole swathe of events at JavaOne, in and around Adopt A JSR. The community keynote will touch upon it for 10 minutes, and there's workshops etc. At the moment, it's probably at the stage where we've got a few large Java User Groups around the world, which have all banded together and are working on these things. The next stage is we want this to be applied. At the moment, the Chennai JUG in India, SouJava in Brazil, ourselves in London. We really want to see the French become part of it and others. We've had conversations with all the Java User Group leaders and the intentions are all very positive. What we're now focusing on is giving more practical guidance on how they can go about running workshops and give feedback. That's the only thing really stopping this thing from taking off: how on earth do I run this and get the right feedback?

JAX - Great to hear. Thanks gentlemen for chatting to us, and we'll see you at JAX London

For more information about JAX London - the conference, speakers, keynotes and venue - visit the website. JAX London takes places October 15th-17th.

Picture courtesy of MP4