At a Glance: Jan Supol
- Involved in open source since: 2011
- Works for: Oracle
- Eclipse Foundation contributor since: 2018
- Involved in: 12 Eclipse EE4J projects. Project lead for Eclipse Jersey and Eclipse Tyrus.
- Committer to: All 12 projects he’s involved in.
- Committer since: 2018
- Fun fact: Jan’s having the most fun when he’s spending time with his three kids and when he’s working with Java. His kids have started using their own computers, so he’s hoping to combine the two activities in the near future.
Why did you first get involved in open source software communities?
I became a part of the open source software community immediately after I joined Oracle about 10 years ago. At the time, I worked with the Java EE teams that were developing the Jersey and Tyrus frameworks, which were open source even back then. My job was to test product compliance with the Java EE specifications and report non-compliance issues.
How did that involvement lead to you becoming a committer at the Eclipse Foundation?
When it was decided that the future of Java EE was at the Eclipse Foundation, it was natural to continue working on development of the projects that fell under the EE4J umbrella. I became a committer immediately after the Java EE technologies transitioned to the Eclipse Foundation in 2018.
My most important projects are Eclipse Jersey and Eclipse Tyrus. My job is to ensure the development of these projects follows the requirements in the Jakarta RESTful Web Services and Jakarta WebSocket specifications. I’m also involved in ten other specification projects that are important dependencies for Jersey and Tyrus.
How would you summarize your experiences as a committer?
Being a committer is a great opportunity to work on projects that are popular, widely used, and make life easier for project communities. Solving the community’s problems is very rewarding. I also enjoy the opportunity to solve a different issue every day because it allows me to have rich experiences in a variety of situations.
The hardest thing about being a committer is to make the best decision for the project. Sometimes it’s very challenging to understand a proposed solution and to come up with a counter proposal that’s more user friendly, better follows the project style, or is otherwise better suited to the project.
What are your next steps and goals as a committer and Eclipse Foundation community member?
My immediate next steps are to deliver production-ready implementations of Jakarta EE 10 specifications on time.
Longer term, I expect to participate in the next versions of Jakarta EE specifications as we’ll be releasing Jakarta EE every year and many improvements are planned for Jakarta EE 11. I expect there will be many deep discussions about the upcoming features.
What would you say to developers who are considering getting more involved in open source software projects at the Eclipse Foundation?
I would say “just do it”! Getting involved in open source gives you experience, knowledge, and a really good feeling because you’re accomplishing something meaningful.