And the winner is... Click titles below for stories, or go back to intro.     JCP Member of the Year Apache IBM Doug Lea Bill Pugh   Most Outstanding Spec Lead for J2SE/J2EE Platform Joshua Bloch (Sun) Roberto Chinnici (Sun) Linda DeMichiel (Sun) Mark Hornick (Oracle)   Most Outstanding Spec Lead for J2ME Platform Tolga Capin (Nokia) Zhiqun Chen (Sun) Jon Ellis (Sun) Roger Riggs (Sun) Mark Young (Sun)   Most Innovative JSR for J2SE/J2EE Platform JSR 166 Concurrency Utilities Enterprise JavaBeansTM 3.0 The Groovy Programming Language   Most Innovative JSR for J2ME Platform Wireless Messaging API 2.0 Content Handler API Advanced Multimedia Supplements Digital Set Top Box Profile   Java Pro Recognizes Two Best Contributors Spotlight On Jini Community, JXTA Community, Java.net

• JSR 166 Concurrency Utilities
• JSR 220 Enterprise JavaBeansTM 3.0
• JSR 241 The Groovy Programming Language - Winner

"What we've done with Groovy is create a new scripting language, reusing all the great ideas from languages like Ruby, Python and Dylan, yet wedding them closely to the Java platform so there's no leaky abstraction. The language is binary compatible with Java code and works seamlessly with it." – James Strachan, Spec Lead for JSR 241 Groovy Programming Language, Most Innovative JSR, J2SE/J2EE Platform

"All the JSRs that have come through the system, if they aren't dealing directly with the Java programming language, the Java virtual machine, and the Java core libraries, they are putting layers on top of them," says Richard Monson-Haefel, the author and EC member who envisioned the project and wrote the proposal for the award-winning JSR 241, Groovy. "JSR 241 is unique compared to any other JSR because it fundamentally changes our perspective on the platform," he says. It standardizes an entirely new programming language, Groovy, for the Java platform, enabling developers to write code more efficiently while using the same Java core libraries and virtual machine.

Groovy may sound like a throwback to the sixties, but this is not your grandmother's JSR. James Strachan, the spec lead for JSR 241, talks about Groovy's origins. "Up to this point folks have only ported existing scripting languages to the Java platform. What we've done with Groovy is create a new scripting language, reusing all the great ideas from languages like Ruby, Python and Dylan, yet wedding them closely to the Java platform so there's no leaky abstraction. The language is binary compatible with Java code and works seamlessly with it, so there's no two bridges or adapters between Groovy or Java -- they are identical at the binary level."

Believing that more opportunities for feedback would optimize the result, Strachan's almost completely transparent treatment of the entire JSR process is also innovative. Practically all discussions are conducted over open public email lists, and an online wiki is used to document the development. The specification, reference implementation, and TCK are open source projects.

"JSR 241 pushes the boundaries of the Java platform by making scripting a native feature, and it pushes the JSR process by making open source projects an equal citizen," says Strachan. According to Monson-Haefel, people are "very excited" about the JSR; some developers find that scripting languages enable them to do certain kinds of programming "much more efficiently."

As for the future, Strachan and Monson-Haefel hope JSR 241 spawns more creative thinking and original JSRs. Strachan is game for "anything that dramatically simplifies the complexity developers have to deal with."