Java Committee Process reform continues with merge of Executive Committee

As London Java Community and CloudBees assume their role on the JCP EC, Java EE/SE and ME join forces
Following last month’s Java Community Process Executive
Committee elections, which saw the London
Java Community and CloudBees grab the two elected seats, the Java
steering board has now been fully
merged.
As part of the JCP.next reform, JSR 355: Executive
Committee Merge will go through on Tuesday 13th
November, meaning the two old Executive Committees (representing
Java SE/EE and ME respectively) become one. With the industry
converging, it was decided that having
two separate boards no longer made
sense.
For this to occur, IBM and Oracle have
each given up one of their seats,
as both held two seats in the old format. Four members (AT&T,
Deutsch Telekom, Siemens and Vodafone) didn’t run for re-election,
whilst RIM forfeited their seat in October for missing five
consecutive meetings.
This now means there are 24 Executive
Committee Members making decisions across the Java
spectrum. Members are expect to vote on all JSRs and help foster
Java’s evolution through approving them. They are also responsible
for defining the JCP’s rules and governance and the legal agreement
between members and the organisation.
The latter is a potential sticking point for JCP.next, as it
enters the third stage of reform in JCP.next.3,
which will tackle a wide array of outstanding issues with the JCP
and redefine them. JCP
Chair Patrick Curran said back in June that
JSR
358 will “tackle a large
number of complex issues” including new
transparency requirements, the role of members, patents, IP
flow and TCK and compatibility
policy.
With so many corporations and individuals sitting on the
Executive Committee, it won’t be an
overnight job to sort out the legal requirements. Curran expects
the final stage of JCP reform to take around a year to thrash out
all the issues. Fortunately, the amount of preparation
put in so far makes us believe that there is enough momentum within
the Executive Committee to see this through.
It’s a great achievement getting this far down the line, with
so much needing to change within the JCP. Now the really hard work
starts, with a reinvigorated and merged Executive Committee leading
the way.