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 place in November, during which members vote on candidates who nominate themselves for elected seats on the ECs. If you're a JCP member please cast your vote at http://jcpelection2007.org/.

All six nominees were elected. Five of them are currently serving as EC representatives: RIM, Samsung, the Apache Software Foundation, Red Hat Middleware, and Nortel. One winner is new to the ECs: Time Warner Cable.

In the elections for the Java ME EC, JCP members re-elected two strong proponents of Java in the smartphone space. Research in Motion (RIM) has been a member of the JCP for seven years, and 19 of their employees have served on a total of 30 Expert Groups. Samsung has also been a JCP member since the year 2000, and 34 of their employees have been involved in 35 Expert Groups. The third member, Time Warner Cable, is new to the EC though they have been a member of the JCP since 2004. The cable industry in North America is in the process of transitioning from set-top boxes based on proprietary technologies to set-tops, digital televisions, and related devices that support the Java ME-based OpenCable Platform (OCAP) (www.opencable.com/) standard, which enables a wide range of interactive applications and services. Time Warner Cable is an active proponent of that standard within the industry.

In the elections for the Java SE/EE EC two strong proponents of the open source development mode were re-elected. The Apache Software Foundation has been active in the JCP since they joined the program in the year 2000; 38 of their members have served on more than 30 Expert Groups. Apache won the JCP's Member of the Year award in 2005 and again in 2007. The second winner is Red Hat Middleware. RedHat shares Apache's belief that standards must be developed in an open manner with strong community participation. Since they joined the JCP in 2003, 26 Red Hat members have promoted that goal with energetic involvement in the development of 24 JSRs. The third re-elected SE/EE EC member is Nortel Networks, which joined the JCP in 1999. Since that time 22 of their employees have become involved in the community, participating in 15 Expert Groups. Nortel brings the perspective of a non-Java platform vendor to the JCP, representing the interests of the telecom and developer communities.

Introducing the Newly (Re-)Elected EC Members
RIM is represented on the ME EC by Mike Rybak, their standards manager. Mike contributed to the development of some of the core concepts on which the Java-based BlackBerry system is built, and he has participated in several JSRs. Of his service on the EC Mike says, "The issues we run into tend to be large and take a very long time to resolve. I'd like to think that, if nothing else, I helped RIM's business partners who are also on the committee to better understand how we can evolve the Java ecosystem to our mutual benefit. Personally and professionally I'm most interested in ensuring that Java ME becomes the dominant mobile software platform despite intense competition from other software platforms."

Dr. Kil-Su Eo represents Samsung on the ME EC and he is helping to develop JSR 278 (the Resource Management API for Java ME) (http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=278). With a background in application development, Dr. Eo has led projects in audio, video, image, and speech codecs, security algorithms, and speech recognition, and his team developed the first version of Samsung's MP3 player. In his current capacity as vice president and head of the Software Solutions Team in the Digital Media R&D Center, Dr. Eo works on embedded system software, middleware, and audio/visual applications for digital media devices. He serves on the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) under the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA).

Time Warner Cable (TWC) will be represented on the ME EC by George Sarosi, the principal software architect for TWC's Advanced Technology Group and chair of the Cablelabs OCAP working group. He was the lead architect for the development of the OCAP middleware stack by OCAP Development LLC (a joint venture between Time Warner and Comcast). George has served on the Expert Group for JSR 242, "On Ramp to OCAP," which has just released the final version of its specification (see below). George says, "I believe this will give me an opportunity to learn how other contributors and industries are using Java technology and to see how Time Warner Cable and the entire cable industry can learn from these experiences to provide a more robust and compelling platform for our subscribers."

Before joining Apache and representing the Foundation on the Java SE/EE Executive Committee, Geir Magnusson Jr held a variety of executive positions in high-tech companies. He has managed a distributed team of developers delivering distributed workflow and notification products to the world's top-tier credit card and travel services companies, and in another capacity he led the development of Bloomberg's worldwide elementized data distribution system. Geir is currently a director of the Apache Software Foundation, as well as the chairman of the Apache Geronimo project, which he helped found.

Harpreet Geekee, the SE/EE EC representative for Nortel, is the leader of Nortel's Design Authority and in this role he is responsible for driving and influencing Java technology development across the company. He is also a senior architect responsible for developing service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web services strategies for various Nortel portfolios. Harpreet is a strong believer in leveraging the strengths of Java technology and in using standards organizations such as the JCP program to facilitate modular design.

Dr. Mark Little represents Red Hat Middleware on the SE/EE EC. He is the service-oriented architecture (SOA) technical development manager and director of standards in Red Hat's JBoss division. Before joining Red Hat, Mark was chief architect and co-founder at Arjuna Technologies, a spin-off from Hewlett-Packard.

Updated JSRs This Month
With Time Warner's election to the ME EC, it seems appropriate that JSR 242: Digital Set Top Box Profile - "On Ramp to OCAP" (http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=242), led by Cox Communications, went final in September. While OCAP will permit the next generation of set-top boxes and digital TVs to support a wide range of interactive services, JSR 242 addresses the problem posed by the large installed base of existing set-top boxes that do not have the resources necessary to run the full OCAP stack. This JSR defines a Java2 ME profile based on the Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) (http://java.sun.com/products/cldc/index.jsp) that can be deployed to resource-constrained devices that are already present in the market. The spec provides a clear upward compatibility path for migrating content to newer OCAP-based devices.

Another final release this month is JSR 280: XML API for Java ME (http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=280). This JSR, jointly led by Sun and Nokia, defines a subset of the Java SE XML-processing APIs that can be implemented on Java ME. Mobile devices implementing this JSR will support the development of client applications that interact with Web services over the network.

JSR 281: IMS Services API (http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=281), led by Ericsson and BenQ, has recently entered the Public Review period. During this period members of the public - as well as JCP members - are encouraged to review and comment on the specification draft. This JSR is yet another example of the interaction between stan-dards bodies, since it defines APIs that enable applications to integrate with the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Multimedia_Subsystem) originally defined by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) (www.3gpp.org/) - a collaboration between an alphabet-soup of telecommunications standards bodies including the European Telecommunication Standards Institution (ETSI) and equivalent organizations in the United States, China, Japan, Korea, and Australia.

Finally, in the EE space JSR 196: Java Authentication Service Provider Interface for Containers (http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=196), led by Sun, recently went final. This JSR defines a standard service provider interface through which authentication mechanism providers may be integrated with Java EE containers.

As always, the Focus on JSRs section of the JCP home page (http://jcp.org/en/home/index) provides full details about active JSRs. We welcome your involvement in the JSR development process and please don't forget to vote in the second round of the elections.