users@javaee-spec.java.net

[javaee-spec users] Re: -experts list

From: Bill Shannon <bill.shannon_at_oracle.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2012 16:30:15 -0700

Craig Ringer wrote on 07/25/2012 11:00 PM:
> Bill,
>
> Thankyou. I /really/ appreciate the thoughtful and comprehensive response.
>
> Knowing that it isn't an arbitrary separation or necessarily a desired one
> helps a huge amount, turning it from something very discouraging into an
> irritation to be worked around. Working for a small company, it's easy to
> forget how slow, conservative and bureaucratic things can get in large
> organisations. It's easy to see the people you're dealing directly with as
> having a say in how things work - even though in a big org, they often don't.
>
> I wonder how many people are aware of the reasons for the split? I've seen a
> lot of remarks about unhappiness re the users/experts split in the JCP WGs
> without stumbling across the rather significant details in your post.
We try hard to keep any legal-related issues out of the EG discussions. And if
you've spent any time with lawyers you'll know that many of these issues aren't
cut and dried - different lawyers will have different opinions as to what's
appropriate or acceptable. Thus, it's not really profitable to discuss these
issues here. We do the best we can within the constraints we've been given.

> As for the EG: It's something I've been considering as I get more involved,
> but have been somewhat daunted by. I'm very happy to contribute where I can,
> but I'm in no sense an expert; my primary interest is in the real-world
> quality and usability of EE for end-developers, users, and deployers of
> applications. Frankly, the main value I have is that I'm a /non-expert/ - I
> have quite a fresh and evolving memory of the experience of learning EE and
> the challenges of developing with it as "just another developer". I've
> committed a lot of time to writing up and pushing issues, instead of just
> hacking around them and carrying on as I suspect the vast majority of EE devs
> must do to get their projects out the door. That's given me a real interest in
> the usability and quality of EE, but not necessarily any significant amount of
> expertise.
>
> If I can be of more benefit by applying to the EG then I'm certainly willing
> to give that a go. I'll have to start diving through the JCP verbiage to see.
I think you're doing the right thing to start - observe and then contribute
through the "users" list. If you feel like your contributions are useful, and
you can afford the time, consider joining the expert group, perhaps for EE 8.

> BTW, the JSR 221 JDBC spec - quite a significant one for Java EE and Java in
> general - is still on JCP 2.7 and it has no public java.net site, EG list
> archives, etc. I've seen some frustration about that on the PostgreSQL JDBC
> mailing lists. Given that JDBC 4.1 appears to be planned for EE 7, do you know
> if there are plans afoot to bring JDBC over to JCP 2.8?
I don't know for sure, but I believe that any JDBC spec updates will be done as
part of the Java SE spec update. I also believe Java SE 8 will be done under
JCP 2.8, but note that the Java SE group takes a different approach to these
things than what we've been doing in Java EE. Much of the discussion around
Java SE is done in OpenJDK mailing lists. I think they achieve the same end
result in terms of transparency, but they factor and manage their work differently.