Government intervention and direction has long been critical to the development of the computer industry. The Internet, after all, was derived from the ARPANET, developed in the early 1970s from a U.S. government-sponsored research project by the Advanced Research Projects Agency. Toda...

A couple of recent Brazil-related news events suggested the theme for this column: Java in Brazil. First, the annual International Free Software Forum (FISL) was recently held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. FISL is one of the world's most important free software conferences, and more than 7,...

As I write this the JCP's Program Office staff is busy preparing for this year's JavaOne Conference, to be held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from May 6 through May 9. As you read this you're probably at the conference, or if you were unable to attend I hope you've had a chanc...

In last month's article I wrote about Open Source and Open Standards. This month, having just returned from the QCon conference (http://jaoo.dk/london-2008/conference/) in London, during which I discussed the role of community in the JCP, and particularly the role that individual ('non...

As I write this article the 2008 FOSDEM (www.fosdem.org/2008/) (Free and Open Source software Developers European Meeting) is about to start. Of course, by the time you read this the meeting will be long over (that's the name of the game with publishing deadlines). I will not be attend...

As I recently spoke at the Java Mobile & Embedded Developer Days conference at Sun's Santa Clara campus, and the yearly Mobile World Congress conference was held in Barcelona in February, and the majority of the JSRs that have been active in the past few weeks are in the mobile space, ...

The turn of the year provides an opportunity to review the events of the past and to think about what lies ahead, so I'll address these themes in this month's column. But first I'd like to wish you all a peaceful and successful New Year. It's been a year of steady progress for the JCP....

In October we announced the winners of the first round of this year's JCP elections, during which members voted for three Sun-nominated candidates on each Executive Committee (EC). To refresh your memory, the winners on the Java ME EC were Research in Motion (RIM), Samsung, and Time Wa...

The first round of this year's JCP elections is complete. In this round Sun nominates members for election to six ratified seats on the Executive Committees (ECs): three seats on the Java ME Executive Committee (EC) and three on the Java SE/EE EC. A second round of elections takes plac...

This is election time for the JCP: five seats on the Java ME Executive Committee (EC) and five seats on the Java SE/EE EC are up for re-election. All JCP members are eligible to vote and may cast one vote for each seat (hence the recommendation to vote often). The voting process is in ...

In last month's column Onno Kluyt announced that he would be handing over the role of JCP chair to me. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Onno for all of the effort he's put into the JCP over the past several years, to thank the hard-working staff of the Program Management Offi...