SouJava
Open-knowledge reference entry
SouJava is a Brazilian Java User Group created to promote the Java programming language and other Open Source initiatives. It's recognized as the world's largest Java User Group with 40,000 members.
History
Brazilian Java User Group SouJava was founded in September 1999 by Bruno Souza (JavaMan) and Einar Saukas. It was first registered officially as a technology group in Sucesu-SP (association of technology groups in Brazil), then later publicly announced in a press conference at October 29, 1999. The name (also spelled as SOUJava) is an acronym for "Sociedade de Usuarios Java" ("Java Users Society"), and "Sou Java" also means "I'm Java" in Portuguese.
Since the beginning, SouJava has always been a nonprofit organization supported by volunteer work, quite known by the enthusiasm of its members. It initially had a flat management structure (President and VP were originally Director and Associate Director in the original announcement press release, everybody else were simply referred as "members" except for a Technical Coordinator) but quickly migrated to a more formal model as membership grew rapidly. On November 28, 2004, SouJava acquired Non-Governmental Organization status upon reaching almost 18,000 members and got recognized as the world's largest Java User Group.
In 2011, SouJava became the first Java User Group nominated for the Java Community Process Executive Committee, as Java Community Process Expert Group Member. The following year, it was awarded as Java Community Process Member/Participant of the Year.
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This entry incorporates text from “SouJava” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.