Hi all,

After much thought and consideration the LJC JCP Committee have cast their votes for the JCP elections (Look for the Executive Committee Elections link at jcp.org).  We’re making our vote public and will give our reasons according to the openness and transparency requirements for the committee.

The list of nominees for the seats are as follows (link also contains useful recordings and notes from the nominees):

There are 8 ratified seats and 5 open seats up for election.  Although it may seem like the ratified seats are shoe-ins since to the number of candidates == the number of available seats, enough no votes can make a candidate ineligible to take the seat.

Ratified Seat Vote

Freescale, Gemalto M2M GmbH, Goldman Sachs, MicroDoc, SAP, Software AG, TOTVS and V2COM all get yes votes – they are important players in the Java ecosystem.

In particular they represent:

  1. Strength in the emerging IoT market (Gemalto, Freescale and MicroDoc)
  2. The increasing importance of the BRIC economies on the ecosystem (TOTOVS and V2COM)
  3. The massive impacts on SE and EE platforms today (SAP, Software AG and Goldman Sachs).

In short, we think Oracle have chosen well and see no reason not to ratify these candidates.

Open Seat Vote

This was a very close vote as the strength of candidates was unprecedented. Here are our yes votes:

  1. Azul Systems – Azul is one of the few JVM vendors out in the marketplace. Their inclusion is vital in order to keep Java SE as an open standard and Gil Tene’s insights around thorny legal issues have proved to be invaluable to the EC.
  2. ARM Systems – The world needs Java to run well on ARM, they should be involved in evolving Java, simple as that!
  3. Hazelcast – Represent both strength in the EE space (JSR 107 and 347 for caching and distributed data grids) and also push the SE envelope with the requirements for their core product. Greg Luck is a long time experienced member of the JCP process, his expertise would be welcome.
  4. Waratek – Bring innovative new thinking about the JVM with regards to scalability and security in cloud environments with their multi-tenanted VM. As with Azul, it would be great to see other JVM vendors on the EC to keep help keep Java modern.
  5. Morocco JUG – Representing the voice of developers in the Middle East and Africa.  It’s estimated that a majority of new developers will come from these nations over the coming years and so they should continue to be included at the highest levels of Java.
  6. Geir Magnusson Jr – Geir was instrumental in helping shape Java in the early years of its existence and brings a wealth of experience and understanding of the broader Java ecosystem.  It’s great to see him back!

There were lots of other worthy candidates, but we feel these 5 candidates represent the best balance to face the challenges of the industry in 2015.

Summary

Although the Committee has voted for and endorsed these particular candidates, any LJC member who is also a JCP member can (and no doubt will!) vote any way they wish to.

Cheers,

Martijn (on behalf of the LJC JCP committee