Jim Grisanzio from Java Developer Relations talks with Bruno Souza, who is a Java Champion, leader of the Soujava User Group in Brazil, and a member of the JCP Executive Committee. Bruno received the first Java Community Lifetime Achievement recognition in October 2022 at JavaOne in Las Vegas. “I was totally surprised! I was jumping up and down! I was so honored! It’s an honor to be a member of that group.” he said.

Bruno Souza is known as the “Java Man” from Brazil and that nickname started way back at Sun right when Java was announced and Bruno started evangelizing the technology. Bruno’s biggest early contribution was related to his involvement with the team that worked to open-source Java as well. This fit Bruno’s career well because at that time Brazil had a big government program to embrace free software. Bruno’s main message to the community was “Open Standards and Open Source” as he began his community building efforts around Java. He continually brought top FOSS and Open Standards experts to Brazil to talk about open, standards-based software development. Bruno worked hard to engage the community to get a standards-based Open Source implementation of Java that would pass the TCK.

Bruno left Sun and then returned, and he also joined the JCP (Java Community Process) around 2000 while he was outside Sun because at that point individuals could join. The user group that Bruno helped found, Soujava, also joined the JCP and that helped the JCP grow and be more inclusive. Now all these years later we have an OpenJDK, and open JCP, and hundreds of independent JUGs that can participate in community building and also Java development.

“Maybe my greatest pride, I think, is the idea of the Java User Groups community, “ Bruno says. “We have OpenJDK for development and the JCP for standards, but for me the real Java community is the Java User Groups! These are all volunteers who meet and help others participate and learn.”

Bruno in recent years has been talking a lot about building reputation and career by embracing the open-source lifestyle — writing code in Java or other FOSS technologies, contributing to open-source communities, and helping build the community itself. Since all of your work lives in public mailing lists and open-source repositories, you earn credibility by being visible, contributing, engaging the community, and helping others get involve as well.

Bruno advises that career is a long-term project: “The more you work on it, the more you grow, the more results you have. So, the sooner you start the better. This is not a sprint! This takes time.”

Getting back to Java itself, Bruno, like most Java developers, really prefers the 6-month release cadence over the older system of multi-year development and release cycles. There is a constant flow of technology now which allows for more iteration and interactions between the Oracle engineers and engineers in the community. “Everything you see today in Java, it’s possible because of the 6-month release process. I just loved it when the guys did that! I think it’s amazing! The fact that we now have two releases per year changed Java. I think we’re positioning Java to be even stronger in the years to come. I’m very excited about the whole thing,” Bruno says.

Throughout this conversation Bruno provides a wonderful history of Java since he’s been involved from the very beginning! “People don’t remember that Java was a community from the very beginning!” Bruno says. “We were able to look at the source code from the very beginning and that allowed us to build the community from the very beginning with lots of other companies joining.” And then the JCP was created to allow Sun and the community to discuss the standardization of Java. And then OpenJDK was a huge step because now Java would be everywhere with Oracle leading and building the community. “Java is more participative today under Oracle than during the Sun times.”

“Java + Open Source + Community: That’s what grows our career. That’s what grows Java too!" — Bruno Souza

Bruno Souza

https://x.com/brjavaman
https://x.com/SouJava

Duke's Corner Java Podcast

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Jim Grisanzio

https://x.com/jimgris
https://jimgrisanzio.wordpress.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimgris/