As the POI project has grown the "styles" used have become more varied, some see this as a bad thing, but in reality it can be a good thing. Each can learn from the different styles by working with different code. That being said there are some universal "good quality" guidelines that must be adopted on a project of any proportions.

Marc Johnson Authored the following resolution:

On Tue, 2002-01-08 at 22:23, Marc Johnson wrote: Standards are wonderful; everyone should have a set. Here's what I propose for coding standards for POI WRT comments (should I feel the need, I'll post more of these little gems):

1. All classes and interfaces MUST have, right at the beginning, the POI License (see poi/doc/LICENSE).
2. All classes and interfaces MUST include class javadoc. Conventionally, this goes after the package and imports, and before the start of the class or interface. The class javadoc MUST have at least one @author tag
3. All methods that are accessible outside the class MUST have javadoc comments. In other words, if it isn't private, it MUST have javadoc comments. Simple getters can consist of a simple @return tag; simple setters can consist of a simple @param tag. Anything else requires some verbiage plus all the standard javadoc tags as appropriate. You MUST include @throws or @exception for any non-runtime exceptions, and you SHOULD document any runtime exceptions you expect to throw. @throws/@exception tags SHOULD include an explanation of why that exception would be thrown. If your method might return null, you MUST say so. An accompanying explanation of the circumstances for doing so would be nice.

The motion was passed unanimously with no negative or neutral votes.

Andy didn't feel like going through his mail and sucking out the comments.. If there is anything you feel should be added here do it yourself ;-).