… two long days of MIDP3 discussions, the last 2 days were. The MIDP3 expert group (EG) met in Austin Texas at the Motorola facilities, which was perfect for me, as I was able to attend this face-to-face meeting; as an individual contributor I don't get too many chances to attend EG meetings in person, as it is too expensive for me to cover travel expenses when they happen out of state or abroad.
It was a productive meeting and lots of ground was covered, as the EG continues to go over all the new features and proposals, and revisions to the existing MIDP specification. Lots of work still ahead. It was good to once again see folks that I haven't seen in a while and who have been instrumental in defining MIDP, and meeting newer folks and see the faces of the people I have interacted with for so long over discussion lists. In this particular meeting around 30 people from around the world, from carriers and handset manufacturers.
It struck me that the MIDP3 EG has not received many comments from the development community – note that right now the MIDP3 spec is open to the public for early draft review (EDR) until February 5th, 2007. Having your feedback would be really great. Remember, most of the new features, from LIBlets, to IPC, concurrency and UI enhancements that are being included in the spec came through the great participation from the development community via the MIDP3 survey and Wiki. I know it is a lot of work to review the specification, but having your feedback will help ensure that the specification is flowing well, is complete/robust, and is consistent, and that the new enhancements will serve its original purpose/request – in short the EG needs you. If you are going to be developing software for Java handsets, you want to review the spec and provide comments to the EG; the time is now. If you don't have too many cycles to spare, choose one or two chapters, and review those; the security, concurrency, and the LIBlet chapters are critical in my opinion, but so are the UI, networking, and packaging chapters.
While the current EDR cycle officially ends on February the 5th, the EG will continue accepting comments post that date – please review the spec and send your comments to comments-jsr271@opensource.motorola.com.
> Related to this topic see: Important Java ME Milestones: MIDP3 Early Draft Review, MSA Final Release
ceo