Feedback request: OpenJDK Community Innovator's Challenge Grants

[Andrew John Hughes]

On 04/01/2008, Andy Tripp <openjdk at jazillian.com> wrote:
>
> 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.



Well, in running the program, I believe Sun have some power over things.  At
the very minimum, it should be required that all work is uploaded somewhere
at the end of the time period.  This is what happens with Google's Summer of
Code -- code.google.com has a project which hosts all the code created
during this summer's event.

>
> >   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.



This would work fine if OpenJDK already had a usable bug database like other
FOSS projects (e.g. I could see such a thing being done fairly easily with
GNU Classpath, which has the same issue but on a much smaller scale).  Given
that bug reports currently require all sorts of internal Sun approval, this
just wouldn't be practical.

That said, I agree it's an issue and again a nice piece of low-hanging fruit
when things get going properly.

>
> > 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.
>
>
Well, yes, a design process like choosing and implementing a new bug
database is more a case for a wiki I think, but again, this was given as an
impractical project in the first e-mail anyway!  Certainly a book could be
developed collaboratively using a version control system.  Most FOSS project
documentation is developed along with the source code base in this manner,
and I can think of a few examples of books done this way (e.g. the one for
SVN itself IIRC).  They can be used for more than just source code.

Thanks,
-- 
Andrew :-)

Help end the Java Trap!
Contribute to GNU Classpath and the OpenJDK
http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath
http://openjdk.java.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20080106/bb0cbb45/attachment.html>