New Language Features for JDK7 - from the Java Community!

The Belgian Java Users Group, BeJUG, and the Brazilian Java Users Group, SouJava, are pleased to jointly submit a language JSR for JDK7!

The Closures for Java language extension was first described in a JavaPolis 2006 presentation (view talk on Parleys.com), and has been an active topic of discussion at conferences, message boards, and blogs. The text of the JSR submission was negotiated earlier this year, and published at the end of April. One detail remained a mystery, though: who is the submitting organization? We can now reveal that the proposal is a joint submission from the Belgian and Brazilian JUGs! It was formally submitted to the JCP on Wednesday, November 7, 2007.

This is a milestone for the Java Community. This is the first JSR filed by a Java Users Group. It will be the first Java language JSR led outside of Sun Microsystems. In the spirit of openness exemplified by the open-source JDK and Sun's acceptance of leadership outside its own organization, the expert group will do its work on a publicly-readable mailing list.

At the same time, a collection of smaller language features are being proposed in a JSR submission by Google. The rest of this newsflash describes those changes.

Both JSRs will get presented next month at JavaPolis 2007 in Antwerp/Belgium.

Read full newsflash here

"Google had no part in this announcement and no involvement in any Closures JSR. We regret any confusion that may have been caused by this mailing, and by the premature release of the details of the "smaller language features" JSR. We misspoke when we said that "This will be the first Java language JSR led outside of Sun Microsystems." Of course no JSR can proceed without approval from the JCP EC, which has not yet been secured."