[4][5][6] Brazilian Java User Group SouJava was founded in September 1999[7][8] by Bruno Souza (JavaMan) and Einar Saukas.

[12][13][14] It initially had a flat management structure (President and VP were originally Director and Associate Director in the original announcement press release, everybody else were simply referred as "members" except for a Technical Coordinator)[10] but quickly migrated to a more formal model as membership grew rapidly.

On November 28, 2004, SouJava acquired Non-Governmental Organization status[15] upon reaching almost 18,000 members and got recognized as the world's largest Java User Group.

[17] Over the years, SouJava has organized several Java conferences in Brazil,[1][4][18] and it helped influence the adoption of open source by the Brazilian government [4][19][20] (mainly by leading an open standards and platforms manifesto,[21] organizing Javali at FISL,[22] and working together with the Brazilian Federal Government's Information Technology National Institute [23][24]), which in turn forced Sun Microsystems to open-source Java.

[25][26] It's also the co-creator, together with London Java User Group, of "Adopt a JSR" program, an effort to encourage JUG members and the wider Java community to get involved in JSRs[27][28][29][30] SouJava is headquartered in São Paulo, with branches in Campinas,[31] Rio de Janeiro and Brasília.