Project proposals

[Ray Gans]

In my opinion, there should generally be a fairly low bar to jump  
over to get a project approved -- it should be relevant to OpenJDK of  
course (i.e., text editors, games, etc. belong somewhere else), but  
research is usually a good thing, even if the direction isn't  
necessarily the focus of the majority. Groups should sponsor projects  
that their memberships want associated with the group -- not because  
they think a project is worthy of being added to the main source  
distribution, but because the project is relevant to that group's  
focus area, or that it someday might be. I would expect that  
discussions about such projects could naturally occur on the group  
mailing lists and be of interest to some of the group's participants.

Groups of course have the ability to define the height of the  
acceptance bar because their members get to vote. If that bar is set  
too high, however, projects will be created somewhere else and not in  
OpenJDK -- which sometimes is appropriate -- but shouldn't occur so  
often that people feel unwelcome to participate. Hopefully, group  
members won't often propose projects that are really terrible ideas  
or inappropriate for a group. And while I certainly don't think we  
want to create a community of half-baked abandoned projects, I do  
believe we want to enable people who are excited about working  
together to solve problems or try out new directions. Disk space is  
cheap, ideas are not.

-Ray