Welcome to the December edition of the JCP column! Each month you can read about the Java Community Process: newly submitted JSRs, new draft specs, Java APIs that were finalized, and other news from the JCP. This time around I'll cover the recent elections for the Executive Committees and four new J2ME-related JSRs.

The Envelope Please!
During October and November the annual elections for the two Executive Committees take place. Each year the elections are managed by PriceWaterhouseCoopers to ensure an impartial execution of the proceedings.

In October the JCP membership ratified the nominations that Sun had put forward, resulting in the appointments of Apache, Borland, and Nortel to the SE/EE EC, and NTT DoCoMo, RIM, and Samsung to the ME EC. The main criteria that Sun uses in selecting JCP members for nomination are concentrated on maintaining (and sometimes improving) broad market representation and geographic diversity - a little more on that in a moment.

The second phase of the elections is the open election on JCP members who nominated themselves for the open seats. This year for the ME EC two places were available, and the SE/EE EC had three available seats. Out of 10 candidates the JCP members voted to elect Google, JBoss, and Intel to the SE/EE EC. From the seven candidates for the ME EC, Intel and Orange France won the election. Congratulations to the winners, and for the others hopefully better luck next time.

Together with the outcome of the ratification vote, there are some interesting new dynamics emerging. On the SE/EE EC there is better representation for the JAIN and OSS/J efforts in the JCP through the appointment of Nortel. I'm glad that Apache accepted our invite to continue their participation at this level in the JCP, so that open source viewpoints are present during our meetings. And with the election of the JBoss Group there will be additional perspective brought in from this section of the community. Then there is the relative newcomer to the Java community in the form of Google, albeit represented by a familiar face in the person of a spec lead of old, Josh Bloch (welcome back!). On the ME EC there will be more balance between manufacturers' interests and providers' interests through the appointments of NTT DoCoMo and Orange France. I'm also pleased to see an increased Asian presence on this EC through Samsung as well as NTT DoCoMo.

The newly elected EC members took office on Tuesday, November 30.

New Activities in the J2ME Technology Space
The J2ME technology section of the JCP is busy and hard at work. The four new JSRs that I'll discuss in this month's column are all J2ME focused.

JSR 256, Mobile Sensor API, was submitted by Nokia and approved by the ME EC. The JSR proposed to build an optional package to communicate with and manage sensors from the mobile device. There are many different sensor types (heart rate monitors, thermometers, cameras, microphones, etc.) that may connect to mobile devices using a variety of protocols. This JSR plans to provide a common approach to interacting with sensors for CLDC 1.1-based devices.

Nokia also submitted the proposal for the Contactless Communication API or JSR 257. Contactless communication, both one-way and bidirectional, may be based on RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), NFC (Near Field Communication), or bar codes. These mechanisms are used to exchange relatively small amounts of data between devices, or transport that data to a device from product packaging, for example.

The third new JSR, Mobile User Interface Customization API or JSR 258, was also approved by the ME EC but not until after the submittal of various voting comments by the EC members. The Spec Lead proposed to define a generic approach for the customization of a device's user interface, whether the interface is based on LCDUI (MID-P), AGUI (JSR 209) or AWT from Personal Profile (just examples). One approach it will use to achieve this is through the creation of a common vocabulary where the vocabulary maps to the customization properties of the device's user interface.

JSR 259, Ad Hoc Networking API, was proposed by Siemens. This JSR plans to specify an API that enables communication between mobile devices in a peer-to-peer networking environment, and enabling these devices to dynamically join ad hoc networks. The JSR will provide facilities such as service discovery and registration, and capability inquiry. The API would give access to various dynamic communications technologies, such as ZeroConf, UPnP, and JXTA.

That's it for this month. I'm very interested in your feedback. Please e-mail me with your comments, questions, and suggestions.