<style>
/* Changing the layout to use less space for mobiles */
@media screen and (max-device-width: 480px), screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2) {
#email-body { min-width: 30em !important; }
#email-page { padding: 8px !important; }
#email-banner { padding: 8px 8px 0 8px !important; }
#email-avatar { margin: 1px 8px 8px 0 !important; padding: 0 !important; }
#email-fields { padding: 0 8px 8px 8px !important; }
#email-gutter { width: 0 !important; }
}
</style>
<div id="email-body">
<table id="email-wrap" align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="background-color:#f0f0f0;color:#000000;width:100%;">
<tr valign="top">
<td id="email-page" style="padding:16px !important;">
<table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="background-color:#ffffff;border:1px solid #bbbbbb;color:#000000;width:100%;">
<tr valign="top">
<td bgcolor="#3e4c4e" style="background-color:#3e4c4e;color:#ffffff;font-family:Arial,FreeSans,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12px;line-height:1;"><img src="https://www.jboss.org/dms/hibernate/images/jira/jiraheader_hibernate.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:top;" /></td>
</tr><tr valign="top">
<td id="email-banner" style="padding:32px 32px 0 32px;">
<table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" style="width:100%;">
<tr valign="top">
<td style="color:#505050;font-family:Arial,FreeSans,Helvetica,sans-serif;padding:0;">
<img id="email-avatar" src="https://hibernate.onjira.com/secure/useravatar?avatarId=10162" alt="" height="48" width="48" border="0" align="left" style="padding:0;margin: 0 16px 16px 0;" />
<div id="email-action" style="padding: 0 0 8px 0;font-size:12px;line-height:18px;">
<a class="user-hover" rel="matthewadams" id="email_matthewadams" href="https://hibernate.onjira.com/secure/ViewProfile.jspa?name=matthewadams" style="color:#6c797f;">Matthew Adams</a>
commented on <img src="https://hibernate.onjira.com/images/icons/improvement.gif" height="16" width="16" border="0" align="absmiddle" alt="Improvement"> <a style='color:#6c797f;text-decoration:none;' href='https://hibernate.onjira.com/browse/BVAL-341'>BVAL-341</a>
</div>
<div id="email-summary" style="font-size:16px;line-height:20px;padding:2px 0 16px 0;">
<a style='color:#6c797f;text-decoration:none;' href='https://hibernate.onjira.com/browse/BVAL-341'><strong>Add @Nullable for explicit communication of nullability</strong></a>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top">
<td id="email-fields" style="padding:0 32px 32px 32px;">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="padding:0;text-align:left;width:100%;" width="100%">
<tr valign="top">
<td id="email-gutter" style="width:64px;white-space:nowrap;"></td>
<td>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
<tr valign="top">
<td colspan="2" style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial,FreeSans,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12px;padding:0 0 16px 0;width:100%;">
<div class="comment-block" style="background-color:#edf5ff;border:1px solid #dddddd;color:#000000;padding:12px;"><p>I don't really know what the "'dynamic' land of JSR 303" is, so I can't really answer in any other way than this: the purpose of @Nullable would simply be to remove ambiguity.</p>
<p>Before JSR-303, any time you saw a reference type, you had to ask yourself "Can that be null?" and then dig to find out, either in javadoc, other docs, or code.</p>
<p>After the first release of JSR-303, at least you knew when something was *<b>not</b>* supposed to be null, thanks to the @NotNull annotation (and its opposite, @Null, which I still find a bit odd). However, the lack of a @Nullable annotation leaves an ambiguity that the developer must still resolve as to whether or not a reference is nullable. The developer is left to wonder whether or not the author really meant that the reference should be nullable or whether they just forgot to include the @NotNull annotation or didn't know about JSR-303. With the introduction of a @Nullable annotation, it would be explicit that the annotated reference is allowed to be null.</p>
<p>I could see a nice tooling addition, similar to eclipse's save action "add @Deprecated to elements marked in javadoc as @deprecated", that would add @Nullable to any reference that is not marked @NotNull or @Null.</p>
<p>Now, if that means that we'll have @Nullable everywhere and it's just noise, then fine, close this request as "won't fix", and we'll all go on in our post-JSR-303 world, interpreting an unqualified reference type as necessarily nullable. That seems like a fine default once you know you're in a codebase whose authors know about JSR-303 and have added @NotNull (& @Null) where they should. If, however, being explicit about nullability is valuable, despite the extra characters, then provide the annotation and its validation implementation of always returning true.</p>
<p>I'll leave it to the expert group to discuss & decide. I'm fine with the outcome either way.</p></div>
<div style="color:#505050;padding:4px 0 0 0;"> </div>
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</table>
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</table>
</td>
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</table>
</td><!-- End #email-page -->
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<tr valign="top">
<td style="color:#505050;font-family:Arial,FreeSans,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:10px;line-height:14px;padding: 0 16px 16px 16px;text-align:center;">
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</td>
</tr>
</table><!-- End #email-wrap -->
</div><!-- End #email-body -->