Expanding our QA outreach effort

[dalibor topic]

Hi,

as you can see from the draft Q2 report [0], our QA outreach effort is 
going strong, and resulted in a regular stream of high quality bug 
submissions. Rory, Balchandra and me recently chatted about how to 
expand this effort further, to include more FOSS projects (and in 
particular their core developers) in this outreach effort.

With the increasing adoption of OpenJDK 8 in Linux distributions [1], I 
would expect upstream projects packaged by Linux distributions to get 
rebuilt and re-tested on OpenJDK 8, uncovering issues to fix in such 
projects, or eventually in the JDK itself. [2] Accordingly, I think the 
next round of FOSS projects to reach out for this Group's QA outreach 
effort to could come from the set of projects being packaged by popular 
Linux distributions like Fedora, Debian, etc.

I don't think that we should take on too much at once, though, i.e. try 
to reach every open source project out there, so I'd be looking to add 
'just' another 20-ish projects until Java One.

What we have found worked well in the past was to establish contact with 
a FOSS project's lead / core developers first, to understand if they 
would be willing to participate and regularly test & report bugs against 
builds, and to then work off that to build a solid connection with our 
contacts helping shepherd bugs to the right channels, providing feedback 
on progress and more.

That's why for this round I have compiled a pretty arbitrary list of 
around 20 projects packaged in Linux distributions, which I would like 
to contact about taking part in the QA outreach effort:

Apache Commons Collections
Apache Commons Exec
Apache Commons Lang
Apache Commons Math
Apache Felix *
Apache Mina
Apache Open Office *
Apache POI *
Apache Struts
bnd *
Bouncy Castle
Clojure *
Ehcache
gradle *
ICU4J
iText *
Jetty *
JGit *
Jitsi
Jython
Libre Office *

I think that I have some initial contacts for the projects marked with a 
* , but I could always use more - so if you know a *core developer* [3] 
on a FOSS project listed here, send me an e-mail *off-list* and I'd be 
happy to get introduced, along with Rory and see if they are willing to 
participate.

The same holds for any other major FOSS projects you know core 
developers of - again, send me an e-mail off-list, and we'll coordinate 
the next steps. In addition, feel free to suggest other FOSS projects to 
get in touch with in this, or next round.

So - please, don't reply on list with other people's contact data, like 
e-mail addresses - get in touch with me & Rory off list instead. Reply 
on list with further projects to contact, if you have specific FOSS 
projects in mind that you believe would be interested in participating.

As we add new projects, they'll appear in the wiki, and we'll announce 
additions on the list, as well.

cheers,
dalibor topic

[0] 
https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/Adoption/Quarterly+Report+for+Q2+2014
[1] https://packages.qa.debian.org/o/openjdk-8.html & 
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openjdk-8
[2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-java/2014/04/msg00092.html
[3] I.e. someone actively working on the project with a sufficiently 
deep understanding of the said project's code base to be able to provide 
high quality bug reports
-- 
<http://www.oracle.com> Dalibor Topic | Principal Product Manager
Phone: +494089091214 <tel:+494089091214> | Mobile: +491737185961
<tel:+491737185961>

ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG | Kühnehöfe 5 | 22761 Hamburg

ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG
Hauptverwaltung: Riesstr. 25, D-80992 München
Registergericht: Amtsgericht München, HRA 95603
Geschäftsführer: Jürgen Kunz

Komplementärin: ORACLE Deutschland Verwaltung B.V.
Hertogswetering 163/167, 3543 AS Utrecht, Niederlande
Handelsregister der Handelskammer Midden-Niederlande, Nr. 30143697
Geschäftsführer: Alexander van der Ven, Astrid Kepper, Val Maher

<http://www.oracle.com/commitment> Oracle is committed to developing
practices and products that help protect the environment