Oracle has nominated Brazilian user group SouJava to fill the vacancy left by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) on the Java SE/EE executive committee. SouJava, one of the oldest and largest Java User Groups (JUGs) in the world with 40,000 members, is headed by Bruno Souza who promotes himself as the JavaMan. The announcement was made by Oracle’s Steve Harris to Java users attending a User Group Summit at Oracle's headquarters in Redwood Shores. (A special election will be held shortly to fill three vacant seats.)

Apache's quitting the JCP, the first of its kind event in the JCP's history, was a response to most JCP members voting affirmatively to Oracle's roadmap for Java 7 and 8, which continued to deny Harmony a license. Harmony is Apache's independent implementation of Java SE that is used in Google's Android.

While voices on the blogosphere suggest that SouJava will basically serve as a strawman for Oracle, so that Oracle can claim the JCP isn't the 'Java Corporate Partnership', SouJava's nomination drew praise from Simon Phipps, former chief open-source officer at Sun Microsystems. "A very astute move by Oracle here. They are proposing that the seat on the Java Community Process Executive Committee vacated by Apache should be filled by the São Paulo-based Brazilian Java User Group SouJava," Phipps wrote on his personal blog. "I think that given the circumstances this is the best outcome that could have been achieved and I hope Bruno and SouJava will be able to use their new position of influence to fix the broken things."

If elected, Bruno would be the second EC member from Brazil (Aguinaldo Boquimpani represents TOTVS on the ME EC.) "This is appropriate, since Brazil is a major user of Java in both the private and the public sector. For example, the Brazilian National Healthcare System has been called largest Enterprise Java application ever built, with over 2M lines of code, while starting in 2009 all income tax forms in Brazil must be submitted electronically using a Java application," wrote Patrick Curran, Chair of the JCP.

"I see this as an opportunity to join the fight for more transparence and better developer participation in the JCP as well as working to make sure the Process respect the needs of open source communities," the JavaMan was quoted as saying in response to his new role on the JCP.

The election is also expected to fill in EC seats vacated by two independent members: Peierls and Doug Lea, both miffed with Oracle not granting Harmony a license.