Foojay Podcast #94: More Than a Blog: How Foojay Connects, Sustains, and Evolves the Java Community
- May 04, 2026
- 3 min read
Foojay.io, the website for the Friends of OpenJDK, is turning six years old. To celebrate, Frank Delporte headed to JCON in Cologne, Germany, and sat down with twelve members of the Java community to talk about what Foojay means to them, what they learn from each other, and how the community is evolving.
This episode covers a lot of ground. Sharat Chandar reflects on 25 years in the Java community and why the people are what keep the language alive. Markus Westergren and Iryna Dohndorf both focus on a theme that comes up again and again: developer sustainability. Not just green software, but how you stay healthy, grounded, and relevant when AI is changing everything around you. Markus and his wife researched how developers are reacting to AI, from ignoring it completely to transforming everything they do. Iryna talks about building resilience and robustness as skills, not afterthoughts.
René Schwietzke dives deep into JIT compilation and his work on the 1 billion row challenge, writing fast pure Java code without reaching for unsafe methods. Gerrit Grunwald explains the Disco API, the tool behind SDKMAN, Gradle, and more, which tracks every OpenJDK distribution available, including ones you have probably never heard of from Asia. Catherine Edelveis walks through why choosing the right OpenJDK distribution matters and how reducing Docker image sizes improves both security and performance. Jago de Vreede built a JavaFX UI for SDKMAN and talks about what he keeps learning from the community.
Annelore Egger mentors people who think they do not know enough to speak at conferences. Spoiler: they do. Buhake Sindi brings Jakarta EE into the AI agent world with LangChain4J CDI and a talk on agent-to-agent protocols. François Martin just published a fresh Foojay article on flaky tests and shares what writing and mentoring have taught him about open source. Dominika Tasarz-Sochacka, Frank's new Foojay colleague, shares her vision for growing the community and making it even more welcoming. And Geertjan Wielenga, who started Foojay six years ago, joins remotely from under a lighthouse in Ireland to look back and look forward.
Foojay is more than a blog. It is a Mastodon server, a Slack community, the Disco API, a book on sustainability, a podcast, and now an education catalog. Six years in, it is still growing, still community-driven, and still very much a place where anyone who works with Java is welcome.
YouTube
Podcast Apps
You can listen and subscribe to the Foojay Podcast on:
- Spotify
- Apple Podcasts
- And most others...
Content
00:00 Introduction
02:16 Sharat Chandar
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharatchander/
- Java community and history
- What you can learn from conferences and articles
05:37 Markus Westergren
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/markuswestergren/
- https://foojay.io/sustainability-for-java-developers/
- https://foojay.io/today/join-slack-com-t-foojay-signup/
- Book "Sustainability for Java Developers"
- How to "sustain yourself" in this strange-AI-changing-world
- Everyone in the Java community is approachable and wants to help you
09:46 Iryna Dohndorf
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/iryna-dohndorf/
- https://foojay.io/today/author/iryna-dohndorf/
- Mentoring about sustainability as a developer + groundness + robustness skills
- High performance without crushing your soul
13:59 René Schwietzke
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/reneschwietzke/
- https://foojay.io/today/the-curious-case-of-different-runtimes-with-different-training-data-jit/
- Diving deep into the runtime, JITWatch
- About the broad mix of topics handled on Foojay
- Foojay helps connect the Java community with Mastodon
- Writing the best performing pure, safe Java code for the 1B row challenge
18:28 Gerrit Grunwald
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerritgrunwald/
- https://foojay.io/today/author/gerrit-grunwald/
- https://foojay.io/today/disco-api-helping-you-to-find-any-openjdk-distribution/
- https://sdkman.io/
- The Disco API, the source with all the available OpenJDK distributions, is used by SDKMAN, Gradle, and many other tools
- About the many distributions that are available, even ones that are mainly (and only) used in Asia
- About bringing opensource projects to Commonhaus to ensure their future
27:45 Catherine Edelveis
- https://foojay.io/today/author/catherine-edelveis/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytdo8OGEYFI
- https://foojay.io/today/which-java-runtime-should-you-use-in-production-comparing-openjdk-distributions/
- Reducing Docker sizes improves security and performance
- Many distributors provide builds of OpenJDK
31:16 Jago de Vreede
- https://foojay.io/today/author/jago-de-vreede/
- About the Java community and the place of Foojay in it. What is good, what are we missing?
- SDKMAN, creating an UI for it, and using the many OpenJDK distributions
35:05 Annelore Egger
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/anneloredev/
- https://foojay.io/?s=egger
- Java community, conference volunteering, mentoring
- How to become a conference speaker
- Learn by teaching
38:03 Buhake Sindi
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/buhake-sindi/
- https://foojay.io/today/author/buhake-sindi/
- https://github.com/langchain4j/langchain4j-cdi
- Jakarta EE, LangChain4J CDI, Agent to Agent
- Impact of AI on developer life and sustainability
- Get in touch with your "Java Rockstars"!
44:03 François Martin
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/fran%C3%A7oismartin/
- https://foojay.io/today/author/francois-martin/
- https://foojay.io/today/eliminating-flaky-tests-to-end-world-hunger/
- https://foojay.io/today/five-ways-to-use-gradle-enterprise-to-identify-and-manage-flaky-tests/
- Learn from mentoring, for example, how to earn from opensource
- Foojay author, just published an article about Flaky tests
- Learn from writing and reading
48:18 Dominika Tasarz-Sochacka
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominikatasarz/
- https://foojay.io/today/author/dominika-tasarz/
- https://foojay.io/today/join-slack-com-t-foojay-signup/
- https://foojay.io/today/how-to-submit-your-next-article-on-foojay-io/
- The future of Foojay, how can we get the community even more involved
- What you can learn from the community
51:18 Geertjan Wielenga
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/geertjanwielenga/
- https://education.foojay.social/
- Java communities are everywhere
- How Foojay started and grew
- How can contributing to the community influence your career
- Can Foojay connect to universities and other educational initiatives
58:15 Conclusion
- May 04, 2026
- 3 min read
International Speaker, Software Developer at OpenValue
Developer Advocate at BellSoft. Java developer, author, YouTuber. Writing and talking about all things Java since 2020.
I'm a community builder focused on growing the global Java and Jakarta EE ecosystems. I specialise in developer-focused marketing, community strategy and open source engagement, building strong and collaborative communities through events, content and advocacy. I currently work as a Senior Developer Advocate at Azul, supporting community growth and ecosystem engagement around Payara Community Edition.
International Software Testing Board Member, Author, Speaker | Committer at PreferencesFX and WorkbenchFX
Frank Delporte is a Java Champion, Java Developer, Technical Writer at Azul, Blogger, Author of "Getting started with Java on Raspberry Pi", and Pi4J Contributor. Frank blogs about his experiments with Java and JavaFX, sometimes combined with electronic components, on the Raspberry Pi.
Geertjan is an open source and Java enthusiast, Java Champion, Apache Member, and leader of the Amsterdam Java User Group.
JUG Leader, Java Champion, Speaker, Author, ❤️ Java(FX) and coding in general
Iryna Dohndorf is a software engineer at Karakun Group, where she works on customer projects using the Java technology stack. With strong technical expertise, genuine curiosity, and a deep passion for computer science, she develops technologies that tackle the challenges of modern companies and today’s society. As an active member of the BaselOne Program Committee, the Devoxx UK Program Committee, and a frequent international speaker, she is dedicated to inspiring developers and supporting the growth of the global Java community. An enthusiastic interdisciplinary researcher and developer, Iryna has conducted research in modeling and optimization at TU Dortmund and has worked on software for autonomous driving, government agencies, and EU projects supporting the advancement of organic farming. Outside of work, she enjoys spending time with family and friends, and is passionate about swimming, skiing, and — most recently — cycling.
Jago is a full-stack software engineer at TenneT, as a software engineer he has seen a broad-spectrum of projects and he has been working on multiple large scale educational software and banking projects for the last years. His work is not exclusive to Java and Scala development but also does front-end development, and the integration between these. He is passionate about his work and likes to share his knowledge and has therefore spoken at conferences worldwide.
I help professional Java developers like you to write maintainable code so that you can become a sought-after expert in the software development industry.
CEO and co-founder of Xceptance. René has served as Xceptance’s Managing Director since 2004 including the continuous evaluation and development of test tools and services. He holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Brandenburg University of Technology, Germany. He has been working with Java since version 1.0. While working with and for two ecommerce and one quality assurance company, he gained plenty of insides into Java, performance tuning, and performance measurements that includes but is not limited to JIT, GC, and the JMM. René regularly gives talks and training about programming in Java, GC and memory management, as well as testing and quality assurance.
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first.