At the annual JavaOne event that he calls the "epicenter" of his mission to remake Sun's business by making the company deeply relevant to developers, CEO & President Jonathan Schwartz yesterday wooed attendees with an opening keynote keynote designed to underline how much Sun views as a collective endeavor the building out of new network applications and the targeting of the 1BN+ high-capability cell phones that will ship over the next year.

After emphasizing what everyone here in San Francisco could see for themselves to be true, that this is quite simply "the largest JavaOne in the 11-year history of JavaOnes," Schwartz cut right to the chase when he said that Java is having a tremendous influence on the development of the network and of society itself "not a result of simply Sun, but as a result of the 1,052-member strong JCP, the Java Community Process."

And with that, the cat was pretty much out of the bag. Because what Schwartz's keynote was aimed at achieving was, above all, to deliver a call to action to Java developers, saying - in effect - that for Sun to open-source Java, as both Sun and the wider Java community desires, it is going to be necessary for developers to step up to the plate and join, as individuals, the JCP.

The Governance of Java
"For those of you that don't know," Schwartz said, "there aren't enough individual members of the JCP...you too can be a member of the process that governs the Java platform."

"This is about users and citizens and developers governing the Java platform," he said - meaning that the 1,052 organizations who are members leave plenty of room for individuals to join too.

"These organizations are not looking to Sun to define the  future of Java," Schwartz asserted, "They're looking to the Java Community Process to define the future of Java."

The theme was followed up later in the keynote when, in a moment that many of the thousands of Java developers in the jam-packed Moscone Center had been waiting for, Schwartz invited the newly re-hired Rich Green - now EVP, Software - to join him on the keynote stage.

Schwartz immediately moved to what he called his No.1 question: "Are you going to open-source Java?"

"I'm going to play the 'new guy' card," replied Green (somewhat disingenuously since he knows the situation probably as well as anyone in the industry, but he'd clearly endured an inaugural week back at Sun that involved 90% back-to-back meetings so he can be forgiven). "Here's my perspective," he continued.

"It's pretty straightforward," Green said. "There are two battling forces: the desire to competely open Java up, give complete access; and the flip side - i.e. that comptability really matters and that noone wants to see a diverging platform. The challenge is how to solve for both of those things."

Then, in the words that are already ringing around Javaland worldwide, Green added: "It isn't a question of whether, but a question of how...so we'll go do this."

Schwartz wound back the tape and himself made sure that Green repeated this pre-agreed formula: it's-not-a-question-of-whether-but-how.

"Give us feedback," Schwartz then said, "participate in the JCP, use NetBeans - you can depend on it to be 100% compliant - and if you step up and do this regularly, we'll be able to open up Java."

Having already passed the responsibility for open-sourcing java to him, Schwartz then passed the responsibility for the next eleven JavaOnes to Rich Green. ("They are now your shows!") The audience could have no doubt that Green therefore has become The Most Important Man in Javaland.

It is a role he will excel in, and 2006-7 should be a very interesting year indeed in the history of Java.