Now that the Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems is complete, java.net is seeking new growth for our community: bloggers and article authors, along with people who want to participate in our java.net communities and projects. The uncertainty that has existed for virtually the entirety of my tenure as java.net editor has now reached an initial resolution.
By "initial" I mean that the end of the acquisition uncertainty means today is a new day. At java.net, post-acquisition, we are in "business as usual" mode. Except, the meaning of "business as usual" now takes on a new perspective. I had no idea what the plan for java.net was going to be, post-acquisition. It's clear now that Oracle was working very hard all these past nine months, analyzing their purchase, evaluating what the best first steps would be. But none of that could be conveyed to anyone in public; nor, as you might expect, to an O'Reilly person working on a contract with Sun as java.net editor!
So, where do we stand today at java.net? What does "business as usual" mean for any enterprise, whether commercial, or an open source project, or an online technology community? It means it's time to grow! That's "business as usual" for virtually any enterprise (including my garden, for which I ordered seeds last night). Growth is natural.
It's time to grow again, really, for java.net -- since the too many months of uncertainty without doubt took a toll on our community, just as it took a toll on the sales of Sun products, as customers wondered about Oracle's ultimate level of commitment to specific areas as the "quiet time" dragged on and on... Well, in case you haven't heard, the story is having a pretty happy ending/beginning, since Oracle + Sun are saying loudly: We're hiring! As I noted in a tweet during last week's Oracle + Sun Strategy Session, those two words are "the perfect statement for immediately building confidence among both customers and employees."
Now, I can't say that we're "hiring" at java.net. But, if you've ever considered joining our community, if perhaps you've been holding back because you had doubts about our viability going forward -- well, now's the time to get involved! From what I'm hearing, we are quite viable going forward. Here are a couple ways you can participate, along with some reasons for choosing to do it here on java.net.
There are many places where software engineers and architects can blog. But, if your focus is on Java/JVM related technologies, Java open source projects, the debate over the future of Java and the JDK -- what better place to make your blog's home than java.net? Post-acquisition, we remain an independent voice in the Java/JVM technology realm. It's almost as if nothing has happened, except that we now have improved financial backing!
There are no changes in blogging policy -- I'm still the dictator ;-) ... No, actually, our entire java.net community rules and polices itself. Not that a single censure has been proposed to me during my reign as editor. People who blog at java.net know why we're here, and we blog accordingly -- and very openly, too!
Seriously, consider joining us if the main topic of your blogging is Java-related technologies. We may not have the fanciest blogging infrastructure, but you'll be part of a Java-centric community that I believe has a very bright future ahead of it. Your blog can be part of that future!
Maybe you don't like writing frequently, but you're working on some very interesting technology, and you'd like to share it with the broader Java community. Maybe you've come up with a technique that solves a troublesome problem you know many developers have encountered. Maybe you can provide clues as to how to solve a problem through presenting and discussing a few code snippets? Or, maybe you do blog a lot, but you sometimes want to pull together a broader, more formal presentation, that wholeheartedly demonstrates your findings.
If any of these situations describes you, then you should consider writing a java.net article. Whether the solution you have in mind occupies 500 words or 4500 words, if it's something that may well be valuable for developers for some years hence, composing it into a java.net article is a great way to get it into the public record, on a site that garners a lot of respect and recognition within the Java community. Ideally, you'll be writing about something that's new enough that there isn't much documentation available at this point. You want your article to be among the first that provide a solution to the specific problem you're addressing.
Ah! (or arggh!) at this moment I want so much to quote my ultimate boss Tim O'Reilly's "Three F's of Publishing" dictum -- but I daren't do it, since java.net is a family-friendly site. Contact me if you want to hear Tim's "Three F's of Publishing" statement in private. I think he's right about it! My wife and I applied the dictum when we wrote our MySpace book several years ago. It worked!
Anyway, back to writing an article for java.net: of course, a technology article is a more formal form of composition than a blog post is. You'll want to spend the necessary time to make sure your presentation is well ordered, make sure your sentences, paragraphs, and code snippets clearly convey what you intend to say to your developer audience.
But prior article writing experience is not required! I'm here to assist you, most definitely, with suggestions for focus, slant, subtopics to mention to broaden the audience that will find your article of interest, and basic English language editing where needed (I was an English major in college, along with Physics -- they didn't have software engineering degrees back then, in the mid-1970s!).
So.. think about what you're working on, what you're interested in, within the scope of Java, the JVM, Java tools, Java open source projects, etc. Let me know if you have an article idea! From personal experience, I can tell you that writing articles for prominent technology sites looks great on your resume. Who can't use that right now, and going forward?
Until later...
Well.. I'm out of time for now. It's time to post Tuesday's java.net front page. I do that late at night my time (Eastern US) so that my friends in Asia get to see the new java.net home page (absent my blog, which I finalize in the morning my time) during their lunch break, and my European friends get to see it early in their morning.
More looking ahead for java.net soon to come! Consider being a part of it, OK?
In Java Today, Terrence Barr initiates a three-part series, in which he tries to distinguish some important trees within the Oracle Sun acquisition news forest, with Oracle+Sun: Java News Round-Up, Part 1:
Last week saw a flurry of news, announcements, webcasts, and information around the Oracle-Sun acquisition. In fact, there was so much detail it is easy to miss some of it … so I thought I’d summarize the most significant bits focusing on Java and the Java ecosystem (keep in mind that more information is becoming available on a daily basis so this is necessarily incomplete). This is part 1 which is about the Java strategy...
This running entry collects key announcements related to Oracle's Acquisition of Sun; some from the Jan 27th event, some from companion webcasts, and some later announcements. The main theme of the acquisition is "We're Changing the Way you Buy, Run and Manage Business Systems"...
Amidst all the hype of the Sun to Oracle transition over the last week, some of you may have missed a certain announcement by a Cupertino-based firm regarding the imminent release of a computing device they say will fill the gap between netbooks and laptops. The Apple iPad is not, as some onlookers first suspected, a innovative feminine hygiene product, but a tablet device promising to offer (to quote Apple CEO Steve Jobs) "the best browsing experience you've ever had". But "the best browsing experience" does not include web plugins it seems, as despite the iPad's 1024x768 screen, 1Ghz processor, and support for wireless connectivity, it is destined to be bereft of Flash, Silverlight, and (everyone's favourite in this neck of the woods) Java...
Many users often ask the question : Can i use a custom JAAS Login Module instead of the Proprietary GlassFish Custom Realms for user authentication ?. The JSR-196 Login Bridge Profile allows a Server Authentication Module (SAM) to delegate some security processing to JAAS LoginModules. My team member sudarsan has created a nice blog-post on this with a sample netbeans project showing the use of the Login Bridge Profile. The sample can be plugged in as a ServerAuthentication Module for a webapplication on both GlassFish V2.X and V3...
Quickies: * Jfokus team: fantastic people! Mattias, Helena and all the conference team, thank you! * Jfokus conference: excellent! * Graph DB is buzz word, Emil Eifrem an unique character. * Ed Burns, Toni Epple and Laforge, we missed you guys. * Scrum loosing value due to the excessive number os Scrum masters out there...
In the Forums, wildchild_04 has a Problem with Eclipse invoking plugin org.eclipse.jface: Hello. Im working with Eclipse and Apache ODE (HelloWorld example). Im trying to set up de deploy params to the binding port in my ODE deploy /descriptor with the Eclipse plug in and I got this error: Problems occurred when invoking code from plug-in: "org.eclipse.jface"...
In the JAXP forum, jncolin is Creating a DOM document with namespace: Hi. I'm trying to create a DOM document by adding nodes to it, and I need this document to follow an XML Schema I've defined. I would expect to have the namespaces included in the root, but I never managed to get them (although I can have them at the sub-element level). So here's what I get...
In the Metro and JAXB forum, boraldo asks How to unmarshal nested xsd schemas ?: I have 2 xsd's. Elements of first can contain elements of types defined in second. How can I unmarshall xml ?
Our current Spotlight is the JCP article "Agility: Definitions, Principles, and Practices for Today", by Susan Mitchell: "Agility is a word we hear a lot these days, but there are a variety of methods to implement it within the Java Community Process (JCP) program. Most people grasp the basic idea of being quick, but there is much more involved than sheer speed of development or time to market. There are additional meanings, such as the quality of being mentally alert, skill at changing direction, and the ability to maintain control even during times of stress..."
Registered users can submit event listings for the java.net Events Page using our events submission form. All submissions go through an editorial review before being posted to the site.
Archives and Subscriptions: This blog is delivered weekdays as the Java Today RSS feed. Also, once this page is no longer featured as the front page of java.net it will be archived along with other past issues in the java.net Archive.
Previous Topic
