Spec mailing lists

[Alex Buckley]

Jon,

Readers of The Java Language Specification and The JVM Specification can 
presently send feedback about errors, omissions, and ambiguities in each 
spec to jls-comments_ww at oracle.com and jvms-comments_ww at oracle.com.

While this is a useful alternative to filing spec bugs at bugs.java.com, 
it is still rather unsatisfactory because the addresses go to private 
mailboxes. This makes it difficult for engineers to discuss the 
feedback, and there is no public archive.

I would like to request that the Compiler Group sponsors a mailing list:

   jls-jvms-spec-comments at openjdk.java.net

where anyone can send feedback about either spec, and where Oracle 
engineers who maintain the specs can discuss the best course of action. 
Some particulars:

1. Anyone can post to the list without subscribing. All posts will be 
held for moderation. An on-topic post might, say, claim that a rule in 
the JLS performs an incomplete case analysis, or note a problem with the 
files at http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/. An off-topic post, such 
as a proposal for a new Java language feature, would be discarded.

2. The initial subscribers will be myself and Dan Smith. Where we use 
the list to discuss a piece of feedback, we will cc the original poster.

3. The list will be licensed under comment-and-evaluation terms, and 
publicly archived at http://mail.openjdk.java.net/mailman/listinfo.

4. The list is preferred to various JSR lists that were used to specify 
Java SE 8 and are still occasionally used to raise spec issues 
(eventually they will be disabled) :

   lambda-spec-{experts,observers,comments}
   type-annotations-spec-{experts,observers,comments}
   enhanced-metadata-spec-discuss

Alex