Public Access to JSF 2.0 JSR-314-EG Discussions Now Available

Caveat: Yes this action is long overdue, and many open source projects have long been more open than JSF is, even after considering the changes announced in this blog entry. Oh well.

My very first blog post on java.net, nearly six years ago, advertised the availability of Sun’s JSF implementation under an open development model. This was followed one year later by an announcment of the Java Distribution License for JSF, and another year later with the release of all of Java SE and EE under GPL. All of those announcements had to do with code being free. The process of designing the code is another matter.

JSF is designed using the Java Community Process. JCP allows the individuals who lead the specification teams great latitude in determining just how open they want their process to be. 100% openness is strongly encouraged, but not required. As mentioned in the discussion on Cay Horstman’s blog entry: “A Call to Fix the JCP Oberver Status”, JAX-RS (JSR-311) is a great example of a very open process. Another great example is Mike Milikich's Mobile Information Device Profile (JSR-271). At the other end of the spectrum, we have many more JSRs that are not very open at all. I don't want to name names, but you know who you are. JSF is somewhere in the middle, though I like to think we’re tending towards more open. As Cay mentions, our issue tracker of record is public. As I mentioned above, Sun’s JSF implementation is an an open source project. But as Cay also says, we need to do better.

Cay calls for:

• Email and forum discussions are to be archived (unless there is some specific reason for confidentiality)
• All versions of spec drafts are to be archived
• Observers have access to these archives

I”m happy to announce that we now have all of the above items. For the first item, the JSR-314-EG discussion can now be directly observed by anyone (JCP member or not) by subscribing to the JSR-314-OPEN@JCP.ORG mailing list. For the second and third items, unofficial “Editor’s Drafts” of the spec are now available at the documents and files area of the javaserverfaces-spec-public project.

There are two ways to subscribe to jsr-314-open:

• Using the web interface.

• Send a message with a blank subject line to LISTSERV@archives.java.sun.com. The body of the message must contain “SUB JSR-314-OPEN” without the quotes.

Once you subscribe and create a login for yourself on the <http://archives.java.sun.com/> web site, you can view the archives at <http://archives.java.sun.com/jsr-314-open.html>.

Any content previously sent the JSR-314-EG before JSR-314-OPEN was created is not publically accessible, but know that all future content, for the rest of the JSR, will be.

From the “better late than never” department, I have to point out that we're almost done with JSF 2.0! When you tune into the discussion, you’ll see that we're nearly ready to hand our Proposed Final Draft off to the JCP. I just posted an Editor's draft tonight and you can find it as a zip file or as a web browsable document.

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