Feedback request: OpenJDK Community Innovator's Challenge Grants

Andy Tripp openjdk at jazillian.com
Fri Jan 4 20:34:51 UTC 2008


Andrew John Hughes wrote:
> Agreed, I meant to mention this as well and it was sort of implied in 
> my answer.  Everything about the process should be done in the open, 
> including the development work itself.
I agree, though it may be difficult for Sun to enforce any specific 
"openness". Maybe Sun could just add an
item to their "Your project has been accepted" letter asking that you 
keep it as open as possible.
>
>   There are certainly some areas of the public API documentation that 
> need work as well ;)
Which makes me think of another project idea: a project to clean up all 
the cruft in the bug database. Last I checked, there
were over 25,000 bugs, and going through them at random seemed to 
indicate that most are simple API documentation fixes and
clarifications, non-bugs, and other junk. I would bet that most of the 
active bugs are not being worked and never will be.
I'd love to see some iron-fisted person go through and get it down to 
around 5,000 "real" bugs. But then again, maybe I'm
the only one who's bothered by the volume. And I suppose this would 
require too much work inside Sun also.
>
> I think an open monitored development process for the projects would 
> handle what you mention here.  This is a FOSS project, so the work 
> should be done in the open.  Some of what you're saying seems to 
> suggest that the participants disappear in to a black hole for five 
> months and then give a report back at the end.  If the process is open 
> (and also, if each project has a mentor attached), then such problems 
> would be flagged much earlier and either dealt with, if possible, or 
> at least some use can be made of the partial work done later.
Yes, it's tough to break out of my closed-source mindset :) On the other 
hand, I'm thinking that the progress of writing a book
or choosing a better bug database is a bit abstract, and not well 
captured by an SVN tree.




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