Rod Johnson’s move away from the Spring Framework, which he has overseen since its creation 2003, has been known for a while. In July, Johnson announced his departure from VMware in a blog post entitled ‘Oh the Places You’ll Go!’, writing that he was “ready for some different challenges”.



Today, just in time for the beginning of JavaOne, it emerged that Johnson is to join Typesafe, the company behind Scala, Akka and Play, as a member of the Board of Directors. While the press release doesn’t specify what Johnson’s new role will involve, the company says that he will bring “more than 15 years of experience in the Java infrastructure software space”.



Typesafe is a rising star within the Java industry: in August, Typesafe raised $14m in capital funding, and Johnson’s involvement is merely the latest triumph for the company. The Scala language’s high-profile fans include Twitter, who switched away from Ruby in favour of Scala several years ago.



Johnson, who is no stranger to building a platform from scratch, makes perfect sense for the burgeoning company – especially one working on a language billed as “the next Spring”. Having created the Spring Framework in 2003, he soon founded the SpringSource in the subsequent year, and has continued to oversee its development (and success) over the past nine years.



Hopefully the future of the Spring Framework is still in safe hands. In his parting blogpost, Johnson insisted that he will “always be part of the Spring community, and will continue to contribute ideas”. Indeed, the momentum generated by Johnson over the past nine years should leave it in good stead.