Life at Eclipse

I am very happy to announce that we are publishing a draft of the Eclipse Foundation Specification Process for community review and feedback. This specification process will be used by Jakarta EE as the new open specification process, replacing the JCP process previously used for Java EE. It is also expected that this new process will be of interest to other Eclipse working groups.

We are really looking forward to your feedback, which you can do via the Jakarta EE Community mailing list (preferred), or on the document comments.  The feedback provided will be used as input to finalizing a first version of the specification process and its adoption by Jakarta EE and other working groups at the Eclipse Foundation.  

As you are reviewing this draft specification process, please keep in mind the following key points about the approach that was taken by the Specification Committee.

1. We want to design a specification process to replace the JCP. While there are many differences with the JCP, the key objective was to make the whole process as lightweight as possible.
2. We want the specification process to be as close to open source development as possible. This is actually not a trivial exercise, as by its very nature drafting specifications is a somewhat different process.
3. This is the Eclipse Spec Process, so we want to reuse the Eclipse Development Process wherever possible, and we want to ensure that the general flow and tone of the EDP is followed.
4. We want to create a process that allows code-first development. Specifically, we want to enable a culture where experimentation can happen in open source and then have specifications be based on those experiences.
5. We want the specifications that result from this process to be as high quality as possible. In particular, this means that we need to take care of the intellectual property flows, and to protect the community’s work from bad actors. This requirement manifests as two fundamentally important differences from the EDP:
   • Specification Committee approval is required for releases from Spec Projects, in addition to the normal PMC approval; and
   • We introduce the notion of “Participants” who are committers who represent specific member companies on a Spec Project. This is necessary to ensure that the IP contributions (particularly patents) from companies are properly captured by the process.

All of us at the Eclipse Foundation would like to recognize the tireless efforts of the members of the Specification Committee. A lot of hard work has gone into this document, and it’s very much appreciated. We are certain that Jakarta EE, and many other Eclipse technologies, benefit from the thoughtful efforts of this Committee.  In particular, we would like to thank the following Specification Committee members and alternates:

Fujitsu: Kenji Kazumura​, Mikel DeNicola
IBM: Dan Bandera​, Kevin Sutter
Oracle: Bill Shannon​, Ed Bratt​, Dmitry Kornilov
Payara: Steve Millidge​, Arjan Tijms
Red Hat: Scott Stark, Mark Little
Tomitribe: David Blevins​, Richard Monson-Haefel
PMC Representative: Ivar Grimstad
Elected Members: Alex Theedom, Werner Keil​

I also wish to recognize Tanja Obradovic and Wayne Beaton from the Eclipse Foundation team who have driven the process throughout – many thanks to you both!