Rick Ross embraced the opportunity to represent the interest of his peers by forming the Java Lobby. The Java Lobby unites the developers actually using Java so that their interests aren't lost in the media and legal frenzy.

The father of Tool Command Language (Tcl), John Ousterhout has taken his creation from its birth at UC Berkeley, through growing pains at Sun and now to life at a start-up company.

As the partner at successful venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins in charge of the Java Fund, Ted Schlein is a modern-day guardian angel. He takes a precious few companies under the prestigious KP wing and then takes them, hopefully, to the top.

From Java developer to CTO of Marimba, Arthur van Hoff has stayed in the forefront of Internet technology.