SwingWorker implements Future and Runnable
in jdk1.6 new interface for this exact case was introduced :

public interface RunnableFuture<V> extends Runnable, Future<V> {
    /**
     * Sets this Future to the result of its computation
     * unless it has been cancelled.
     */
    void run();
}

It is much more reasonable for SwingWorker to implement RunnableFuture