A Java modularity specification failed to pass in a vote by Java executive committee members, leaving the future of the technology in question. The issue could hold up the planned July 27 release of Java 9, which is slated to include modularity.

Balloting on Java Specification Request 376 was completed on Monday. The modular plan for Java, intended to make it easier to scale the platform, has been opposed by companies, including Red Hat and IBM. Red Hat, in particular, questioned many parts of the plan, including raising issues about potential application compatibility problems.

[ The big 4 Java IDEs reviewed: See how Eclipse, NetBeans, JDeveloper, and IntelliJ IDEA stack up. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorld's App Dev Report newsletter. ]

Oracle stepped up its defense of the plan in recent days, but that was not enough to sway voters. The measure failed with a 13-to-10 vote.

Voting in favor were: Azul Systems, Fujitsu Limited, Gemalto M2M GMBH, Goldman Sachs, Intel, MicroDoc, NXP Semiconductors, , Oracle, SouJava, and V2Com.

Voting against were: Credit Suisse, Eclipse Foundation, Ivar Grimstad, Hazelcast, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Werner Keil, London Java Community, Red Hat, SAP SE, Software AG, Tomitribe, and Twitter.

There could be a second vote within 30 days, according to Oracle. While the company had said results of the recently concluded vote might take some time to be announced, the balloting results were posted Tuesday.

Hazelcast, in comments accompanying the ballot, decried the lack of consensus on the issue. “From our point of view the lack of consensus inside the EG [Java executive group] is a dangerous sign that either not all issues are clarified the way they have to or that certain issues were marked solved from a single point of view,” Hazelcast said.

Twitter said the JSR would likely be “disruptive to developers” while not providing expected benefits.