Java Magazine - January/February 2012

AFTER A YEAR OF UPHEAVAL AND REBUILDING, JAVA.NET IS GROWING AGAIN, WITH 80 TO 90 NEW PROJEC T REQUESTS PER WEEK, GROWTH IN

MEMBERSHIP, AND NEW COMMUNITY VOLUNTEERS TAKING OVER LEADERSHIP ROLES IN SEVERAL COMMUNITIES. Plans for 2012 include new hardware and performance improvements, adding another level of social and group functionality (starting with Java user groups and then the Java Community Process), a complete redesign in how communities are structured, and improvements to the project catalog and search facilities. Sonya Barry, Java.net community manager, says she has heard many great ideas from community members that she will be looking into, ranging from opening the API so users can create mobile apps that work with the site and improving search engine optimization on projects and people to using geotags to let users know where their nearest Java user group is.

Java.net blog posts on a variety of topics are receiving considerable attention, and innovative new Java-centric open source projects are underway (and seeking added participation from the developer community as well).

Recent Java.net blogs of note include Osvaldo Pinali Doederlein’s JavaFX Balls 3.0, Mamadou Lamine Ba’s What JSF Should Become?, Santiago Pericas-Geertsen’s JAX-RS 2.0— Client API, Cay Horstmann’s Operator Overloading Considered Challenging, and Tushar Joshi’s Concentrating on Task in Hand (Similar to Mylyn) in NetBeans IDE.

Innovative new Java.net projects include JSF extension points, an easy-to-use, powerful drop-in/plug-in system for Java EE; SWELL, an English-like domain-specific language for Swing testing; and the Vorpal XMPP Component Framework, an injection-based XMPP component framework for Jabberwocky. More than 2,200 diverse Java.net open source projects are available. They welcome your participation.

Sonya Barry

Adopt-a-JSR

Want to help move Java forward? Is there some specific enhancement to the Java platform that would benefit you and your industry peers? Your Java user group (JUG) can make that happen by participating in the Adopt-a-JSR program. To contribute to a JSR, your JUG will have to join the Java Community Process (JCP)—a procedure that is being streamlined for JUGs as part of the JCP’s new openness. JUGs have already contributed significantly to changing the JCP through their involvement in JCP.next.

As London Java Community leader (and JCP member) Martijn Verburg (@Karianna) notes, “there are genuine domain experts in JUGs that can serve as EG [Expert Group] members; skilled developers that can help with RI [reference implementations] and TCK [technology compatibility kit] implementations; and enthusiastic hordes that can help test early versions, give feedback, and help deal with project overheads such as mailing lists and issue trackers as well as promoting the JSR in general.”