Twitter and Azul Systems have been elected to serve on the JCP Executive Committee for Java SE/EE, on voting percentages of 32% and 19% respectively. Both firms have also joined the OpenJDK project. Ericsson, Intel, and SAP were confirmed for the ratified seats on the same committee. The firms join Credit Suisse, the Eclipse Foundation, Fujitsu, Goldman Sachs, Google, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, the London Java Community, Oracle, Red Hat Middleware, SAP, and SouJava on the committee. VMware is no longer represented.
CTO and co-founder Gil Tene will serve as Azul's representative on the Executive Committee. "I am honored to have been chosen as Azul's representative to the JCP Executive Committee," he said, continuing
Java is an essential global resource, and I look forward to working with my fellow Executive Committee members, JCP members, as well as the Java developer community as a whole, as we focus on driving platform innovation upstream and reinvigorating community participation.
Amongst other things, Executive Committee members are responsible for selecting the JSRs for development within the JCP, and the approval of draft Specifications after Public Review. They also give final approval to completed Specifications and their associated Reference Implementations and Testing Compatibility Kits. In addition, members review and provide guidance on proposed licensing terms of JSRs, and have a number of other duties defined in the JCP Process Document.
Nine candidates put their names forward for the two elected seats on the SE/EE Executive Committee, the highest number since 2005. As can be seen below, election turnout was low at 23%, but well up from the 18% recorded last year. It is also interesting to note the apparent link, in recent years, between the number of people eligible to vote, and the percentage doing so.
All JCP Members are eligible to vote in ballots for ratified and elected seats, though in the case where one member has majority-ownership of one or more other members, then they are treated as a group, and given a single vote between them.
Executive Committee members serve three-year terms, and each year one third of them are up for re-election. Some of the members are nominated by Oracle to ratified seats, but still have to be voted for in an election, whilst others are self-nominated to elected seats. On each EC there are two ratified seats for every elected seat (currently 10 ratified seats and 5 elected seats) plus one permanent seat held by Oracle.
There are currently two Executive Committees, one responsible for Java ME and one for Java SE and EE together. Each Executive Committee is composed of 16 Java Community Process members. Oracle also has a permanent voting seat on each committee. Oracle has, however, stated that it plans to merge the two Executive Committees into one in the future, as part of an ongoing process of JCP reform.
For the Java ME Executive Committee, five candidates competed for the two open seats, with ARM Limited (36%), and Werner Keil (19%) elected. IBM, Nokia and SK Telecom gained the ratified seats.