Java Community process

[Victoria Rubio]

Hello,
Motorola belong to Java Community Process.
I work in the JADC (Joint Application Developer Center), a future company of Motorola and Telef�ncia M�viles.
We are going to develop J2ME's applications. I would like to know if we have to belong to JCP (sign up).
What are the advantages?
Is it necessary?
Why?
Thank you very much.
Regards.
M.Victoria Rubio Mu�oz
Motorola Spain
JADC Telef�nica M�viles-Motorola

[Mark Herschberg]

The JCP works as follows:
Companies pay $5k to become a member of the "Java Community"--I forget the exact term--hereafter refered to as the community. note, there may be diferent rates for academics/individuals. A member of the community puts forth a JSR (kind of like a RFC), examples of JSRs include MIDP, PDAP, PersonalProfile, EJB specification, RMI Security, RTOS, etc. Pretty much all of Java is covered in one JSR or another.
There is an Executive Committee (EC) which approves all JSRs. If approved, an Expert Group (EG) is formed. It is made up of members of the community. The EG completes the JSR. After being approved by the EC, the JSR goes to community review for 30-90 days. After that, it goes to public review to 30-90 days. Then I think the EG approves any changes to the JSR. I may be slight off on some of the minor details. Check out http://java.sun.com/aboutJava/communityprocess/
The purpose of the JCP was to give vendors other than Sun control over Java's direction. By becoming a community member, you get earlier access to JSRs, and, more importantly, can serve on EGs.
But you don't need to be a member to use the products.
--Mark
[e-mail]
(PS Perhaps this should be moved to a more general topic.)