TheServerSide.com reports on Sun’s recent announcement of the beginning of plans for version 2.6 of the Java Community Process (JCP).

As noted in their headline, the most notable aspect of this announcement is a direction towards replacing the members-only “Community Review Draft” with an “Early Draft Review,” open to the public, and a public vote in place of the secret community vote.

Also welcome will be efforts towards making it “easier to tell when a JSR is working and when it is dormant. This JSR will consider requiring Spec Leads to provide a status report to the PMO on a regular basis, which would be posted to the web site for community member viewing.” The official nature of JSRs is not so important to people who are willing to scout the open source community, but it would still be nice to know if things like JDOM are dead or just resting.