How To Contribute

Jakarta EE is a large collection of technologies, specifications, projects, web-pages, and source-code repositories. There are many ways you can contribute.

First some general background ...

If you haven't already, have a look at the Jakarta EE site. You will find lots of information about Jakarta EE as a strategic initiative and technology. You will also find useful links on this page, as well. If you are not familiar with Eclipse Foundation as a development organization, have a look at the Eclipse Get Involved page.

If you want to understand Jakarta EE, consider this is derived from Java EE technology. There are many online and physical resources that can introduce you to Java EE. Just Google "Java EE Technology" or "Java EE Architecture". We are sure you will find something that matches your level of interest. Over time, you'll be able to switch these searches to Jakarta EE.

Jakarta EE projects are organized under a "top-level" project called "EE4J." EE4J has many sub-projects. You can find one or more that interest you, from the EE4J project page. The EE4J project and all the sub-project pages contain lots of information about that project, including a description, who's involved, and more.

I want more!

A couple of pointers for Jakarta EE on social media

• Twitter: @JakartaEE
• Facebook: Jakarta EE
• LinkedIn Group, Jakarta.EE

If you want to receive notifications about work and activity that is performed on Eclipse web-sites, or Eclipse e-mail lists, you will need an Eclipse Account. Use this form to create an Eclipse user account. With your Eclipse account, you can subscribe to any of the sub-project's developer e-mail lists (you can find these on this page, most of the Jakarta EE lists, include the key 'ee4j' or 'jakarta'). We encourage everyone to, at least join the jakarta.ee-community mailing list, but if you have specific project interests, by all means, please sign up for any developer list that looks interesting to you.

Each sub-project has source code, held in a collection of GitHub repositories. These are listed in the project's "Developer Resources" tab (here's an example).

You can Follow any of the project repositories at the GitHub Eclipse EE4J organization. Just click the repository star, or click the Watch button in the upper right of the repository page. You will need a GitHub user ID to get notifications. Much of the chatter about changes happens via issues at GitHub. If you really want to see what's happening in a project, you should Watch the respective repositories, in addition to subscribing to the e-mail lists mentioned above.

I want to contribute!

In addition to joining discussions on e-mail lists, you can contribute by filing issues at GitHub. Issues are filed against the relevant GitHub repository. As an example, this link takes you to the Eclipse GlassFish issue repository.

If you want to work with code, work with web-pages, and/or do anything that required a pull request, you need to fill out the Eclipse Contributor Agreement. Without this, we cannot accept any submissions, neither code, nor web-pages, nor documentation.

Once you have demonstrated familiarity with a project, you can ask someone on the project's committer team to nominate you, to become a committer. This is done via the committer election process. See Wayne Beaton's article about committer elections, to learn more about these elections. (Wayne's blog might be something you want to subscribe to as he often provides insight and guidance about things going on at Eclipse.) After that -- you might decide you want to take on a Project Lead role -- you do that by getting someone to nominate you for Lead (it's much the same as the committer election).

If your interest is geared toward specifications, you might find Tanja's blog about Jakarta EE Specification Development worthwhile.

If you'd like to see more here, post your suggestions to the Jakarta EE Community mailing list, or feel free to make comments about this page, using the Discussion Tab above.