Max Lanfranconi's Weblog: Random thoughts

I just got back from my vacation in Italy.

Everything was great! We also had snow on new years eve! !

BUT

The return journey was a nightmare... :-(

It all began at the Malpensa airport in Milan, Italy.

We were supposed to board at 8:45 AM in order to leave at 9:25AM.

8:30AM The only flight without a gate is... our Milan - Zurich flight. Oh boy... that does not look promising at all...

9:00AM Still no sign of the gate. At this point it is clear that we will be late. Oh well, we have almost two hours in Zurich, we should still be able to catch our Zurich - San Francisco that leaves at noon. (yeah, right!)

9:30AM the plane that should bring us to Zurich has not landed yet ! (don't you love when they tell you all the story at the right time?)

10:04AM the plan has landed and will (potentially) leave around 10:30ish.

10:45AM takeoff for Zurich. The crew finally tell us that the flights are delayed because of fog (ah ha! Everybody guessed so, given the extremely low visibility in Milan  but the crew at the airport denied :-)  )

11:45AM perfect timing but just in time to lose our flight to SFO (AAAAARRRRGH!) Luckily the great staff at t he Zurich Airport promply rebooked us on a Zurich - Los Angeles a few hours later , and then a Los Angeles - San Francisco. Not ideal, but better than other occasions; after all there is almost a flight every hour between LAX and SFO, right ?

 'BUZZ'

WRONG!

after a perfect flight from Zurich to Los Angeles and an uneventful immigration process, we find ourselves outside the internation terminal at LAX. "You have to walk to terminal 7 and check in again for your flight to San Francisco"

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING !

 After a 12 hours flight we have to walk with our 8 suitcases and a 9 months old baby almost a mile or so to terminal 7, waste a good 40 minutes to check in just to find out that our flight to San Francisco was delayed because of weather! Oh boy !

To make a long story short, our flight was delayed more than two hours to make the total time from airport to airport just above 26 hours.  For reference, our "std" time is just above 15 hours !

Thanks for listening !




 

One of the periodic deliverables for jcp.org is the monthly newletter.
The latest issue is now available on jcp.org.
Enjoy !

The first and second phase of the 2007 Java Community Process (JCP) EC elections are completed. The third and last phase is  under way. (See my previous article on the same subject)

All the proposed ratified members have been elected during phase I:

Standard / Enterprise Edition Executive Committee
Number of eligible voters: 936
Percent voting members casting votes: 26.0%

Apache Software Foundation     94.9%
Red Hat Middleware LLC     87.3%
Nortel     75.5%


Micro Edition Executive Committee
Number of eligible voters: 936
Percent voting members casting votes: 26.0%

Research In Motion, LTD (RIM)    92.7%
Samsung Electronics Corporation     91.3%
Time Warner Cable Inc.     66.8% 

During Phase II the following members nominated themselves: 

Nominees for the Standard / Enterprise Edition Executive Commitee

• Codegear
• Eclipse Foundation, Inc
• Ericsson AB
• Google Inc.
• Interface21 Inc
• Meffert, Klaus
• Pierre-Henry, Perret

Nominees for the Micro Edition Executive Commitee

• Anjos, Luiz Carlos Bentes dos
• Intel Corp.
• Luz, Marlon Faria da
• Orange France SA
• Sheedy, Sean

 Phase III of the elections is running from today, October 30, until November 12. The final results will be announced on November 13. Further details available at the elections site.

One of the periodic deliverables for jcp.org is the bi-monthly newletter.
The latest issue is now available on jcp.org.
Enjoy !

Sometimes I receive emails from either JCP members or other developers interested into JCP activities.

Dave Minter wrote on his blog: 

"I find it very frustrating that the JCP mailing lists are available only to members of the expert groups. Is this a matter of policy, and are there any plans to change this policy in the future? The lack of any document trail makes it very difficult to understand the reasoning behind otherwise arbitrary (or apparently arbitrary) decisions in the standards.

If there were at least a way to join a standards track as an observer, this would alleviate the problem, but currently the JCP is a "black box" process to those who are consumers of the outputs rather than participants in their development.

A large part of the value of open source is the existence of associated public mailing lists (and their archives) allowing any interested party to follow the product development. There seems to be no obvious reason why JCP does not take advantage of this open approach; surely anything that can be said within an expert group (often composed of commercial rivals) can be said publically?"

And here is my reply:

The JCP Program Office is working hard to improve the transparency of the process. There are a couple of tools that are already available to our members.

Every JSR Spec Lead is encouraged to set up an observer alias and a community update page.

It is possible to subscribe to the observer alias for any given JSR from the JSR detail page.

For example, the community update page for JSR 316 is http://jcp.org/en/egc/view?id=316 You can navigate to it from the jcp.org home page. Type the # of the JSR in the "go to JSR" box in the left navigation bar and hit enter. You will be taken to the public JSR detail page. Below the Expert Group table, the third link takes you to the community update page.

Log in using the user-id and the password you were given when you joined the JCP. From the community update page, under the "Community page communication" header, you will find the instruction on how to join the JSR 316 Observer alias.

The Program Office recommends to the Spec Leads to set up and use such tools. Should you find that no such alias exists, or that it does exists but has very little traffic, please feel free to contact the spec lead directly and request that the alias be activated and used.

We are also working on including new features on future releases of the jcp.org website aimed to improve transparency and community communication.

to which, he followed up with:

Thanks for your response, I really appreciate it. Still, I would like to emphasize that the single most valuable addition I could have as a consumer of the JCP outputs is a publically viewable archive of the JSR mailing lists. Is there any chance that this will emerge? I can view the standards documents without needing to join the JCP, after all.

And this is my reply:

As you stated in your previous message, the JCP works like a standard s body. As such, it has its own rules and processes that need to followed. One of the regulated topics is the Intellectual Property assignment.

The IP associated with the three key deliverables of any JSR (the specification, the Reference Implementation and the Technology Compatibility Kit) is assigned to the Spec Lead. It is entirely up to the Spec Lead to decide which license to use when the JSR finally reaches the Final stage.

Some Spec Leads choose Open Source licenses, some other don't. All the conversations that happen between Expert Group members pertain to "Work in progress" that sometimes does not have the licenses well defined just yet.

As such, it may be in the best interest of the JSR itself to keep the discussion between the members. Sometimes there can even be Non Disclosure Agreements involved. This is the current status.

The JCP is constantly trying to improve and JSR306 (the Process Document that defines the framework within which JSRs are developed) is being evolved. One if its goals is to increase transparency of the JCP as well as increase individual participation.

Hopefully this short email exchange will trigger some more conversation and provide further input to the EG for JSR306...

The first phase of the 2007 Java Community Process (JCP) EC elections is under way, providing developers a chance to influence the future directions of Java standards.

The Java Community Process (JCP) is the process that guides the evolution of standard Java APIs (JSR). The JCP is made up of two executive committees (EC), one devoted to Java SE/EE, and the other to Java ME.

Each year, one third of each executive committee is up for election by the community. In the first phase of the JCP elections, the community votes on PMO's nominees, while the second phase invites nominations from the broader community.

The EC members guide the evolution of the Java technologies. The EC represents a cross-section of both major stakeholders and other members of the Java Community. Duties are: select JSRs for development, approve draft Specifications for Public Review, approve Final Specifications, review TCK appeals, approve Maintenance revisions and possibly defer some features to a new JSR, approve transfer of maintenance duties between members and provide guidance to the Program Management Office (PMO).

This year, the Apache Software Foundation, Borland, Google, Nortel, Red Hat on the EE/SE side, and Intel, DoCoMo, RIM, Orange, and Samsung, on the ME side, are up for re-election.


During the Ratification Vote, members vote to ratify each Program Management Office (PMO)-nominated member. The following seats are on the Ratification Ballot:

Standard/Enterprise Edition Executive Committee (SE/EE EC)

• Apache Software Foundation
• Nortel
• Red Hat Middleware LLC

Micro Edition Executive Committee (ME EC)

• Research In Motion, LTD (RIM)
• Samsung Electronics Corporation
• Time Warner Cable Inc.

Following the ratification, members are eligible to nominate themselves for the remaining seats (October 16 - 26) and vote in the final Elections.

Voting is open to developers who join the JCP.

So here I am... Still jet-lagged after an uneventful flight from San Francisco to Oslo via Munich for my first JavaZone conference in Oslo, Norway.

Thanks to the inaccuracy of weather forecast I am greeted by a great Norwegian Sun :-).

The conference is packing a whopping 2,200 attendees this year up more than 800 from last year and is quickly becoming one of the most successful European Java event.

Doors opened at 8AM through a spaceship with all the bells and whistles (strobe lights and smoke FX) ...will post pictures later....

 The main expo area featured a stage with the  Norwegian rock band Ramsund and fakir artists Pain Solution that gave us plenty of adrenaline to start on the right foot.

... Performing body suspensions at 8AM... Once again... Stay tuned for pics...

Oh well, I'm off to some sessions now, my presentation about Java Community Process will be this afternoon @ 2.15PM 

 

 

Patrick Curran is the new JCP chair

Onno Kluyt stepped down as he is dealing with additional tasks within Sun