An update on the GAP, the GlassFish Awards Program. We now have 10 submissions (Submissions Table) and we are aware of at least a couple more in the queue. The GAP Rules award prizes to the top 20 submissions, and we would like to avoid leaving money on the table; if you are planning a submission, I'd encourage you to do it now, before CommunityOne and JavaOne so we can help you put together as strong a submission as possible.

One important clarification: Sun Campus Ambassadors are eligible provided that the work for the GAP submission is unrelated to the work that you are doing for Sun as part of the Campus Ambassador Program.

The GlassFish Awards Program (GAP) is intended to encourage and reward innovation in the GlassFish Community. The program's rules (here) are quite loose and many types of projects will qualify. There are US$ 175K available, for both projects and bug submissions; check Previous Posts for additional commentary.

Some notes on the program:

• Submissions are to be sent to Gap-Submissions at GF (Archive, mailto). • All projects in the GlassFish community at-large are eligible. • Applicants are individuals, we don't care were they work. • Whether you need to sign the SCA depends on the requirements of your project. • Docs, Portals, Workshops, etc, are all eligible. If in doubt, Ask Us. • Don't wait until the last minute; Submit it Now! • A good approach is to submit now what you have, then Send an Update!

We have up to 20 prizes for projects and many more for bug submissions but we have received very few submissions so far. I suspect many are waiting for the deadline, but we would much rather you submit now first and then resubmit. Don't leave money on the table!

Note! We had a configuration problem with the submission alias and it is possible that some submissions may not have been recorded properly. If you submitted, please check the alias archive, and resubmit if necessary.

Phase Two of the Community Innovation Awards Program is now live. Check the Official Announcement, and our Earlier Writeups. Each community has its own set of rules all within an Overall Program. The GlassFish program is described at the GAP Home Page. Key points include:

• Awards for Best Bug Reports and for Best Projects
• Projects can be based on existing Projects in the GF community or not
• Goal is to grow Community in Size, Quality, Innovation, etc.
• Submission Start Date is Now
• Submission End Date is June 30th
• Results Aug 15th
• 175K$ in prizes.

We are almost ready with the set of rules for the GlassFish Awards Program. There will be some last minute adjustment on Monday but the $US 175K will be split into two: awards for the best Bug Submissions, and awards for Project Contributions. Check out the Themes and Project Ideas. The shape of the contest has been influenced by constraints on when the money will be available and when it has to be allocated; discussions threads at the Advocacy mailing list.

Unfortunately Sun employees can't apply :-(

Now that most people are back from the holiday's break, we need to close on the GlassFish Grants and Awards Program. If you are interested please check the Original TA post, the two posts at Users@GF ([1], [2]), the threads at the Advocacy@GF alias and the Program Page at our Wiki.

The intention is to design as simple a program as possible, possibly borrowing the programs that other communities are using. We will be using the advocacy mailing list for any further announcements.

• Metro - Training, Metro on Sun WebServer, Security • Adoption - In a word: Wow!, new GeoMap • Performance and HA - Apache as Load Balancer, Tuning • Tools - Podcast, NB6 is OUT! • Web.Next - Roller 4, Q&A on jMaki, JRuby and Metro • Community - Awards Program, Update Center contest, Mojarra • GFv3 - Wishlist for Docs

Sun has announced a Community Awards Program. This is going to be a multi-year program and this year it covers six communities: OpenOffice.org, OpenSPARC, OpenSolaris, OpenJDK, NetBeans and GlassFish. Each community will define its own program, in particular they can combine awards with grants. The overall guidelines will be described by Simon at his FOSS.IN keynote and we will start working on the GlassFish part of the program in the next few days.

Sun Java System App Server (based on GlassFish) has been awarded the Best App Server in SOA World Reader's Choice Awards. Other GlassFish related efforts such as Java WSDP, XML Web Services Security 2.0, java.sun.com/webservices and JAXP 1.3 also won top awards, while the umbrella platform specification, Java EE 5, was awarded the runners up in Best SOAP / Web Services platform. Several other Sun products/technologies/websites won awards in other categories; my blog provides more details.

The next version of the Sun's App Server, 9.1 (a distribution of GlassFish V2), provides a richer feature set than GF v1, so we hope to repeat the feat again next year. 2006 Readers Awards was mentioned in an Earlier Post.