Social Media JSR 357 rejected by Java Community Process

The Java Specification Request JSR 357 has been rejected by the Java Community Process's (JCP) Executive Committee (EC). JSR 357 attempts to define an API for Social Media so that applications can have a standard mechanism to connect to and access social networks such as Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Of the 16 members of the Executive Committee, only five (Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Red Hat, Oracle and SouJava) voted in favour of the proposal. Eight members voted against (Azul Systems, Eclipse Foundation, Ericcsson AB, Google, HP, IBM, London Java Community and SAP AG), while Fujitsu and Twitter abstained and Intel did not vote. In general, the JSR was criticised for having too broad a scope in attempting to model many social media services.

IBM noted in its comments that it felt it was still too early for a JSR as the APIs in the social media space were still rapidly evolving. Twitter concurred with IBM and suggested that developers should "look at third party libraries for support to connect to the myriad of social networks available". The London Java Community pointed out that the JSR took too little account of the mobile world. Yes voter, Goldman Sachs agreed the scope was broad and that narrowing it would be "likely to lead to success" but that the JSR leads will need to consider Security and Identity JSRs.

Under the rules of the JCP, the JSR leads have 14 days to revise and resubmit their proposals.

(djwm)