OpenJDK Governing Board Minutes: 20011/4/21

[Dr Andrew John Hughes]

[Please keep to plain text e-mails]

On 3 May 2011 14:36, Jason Gartner <jgartner at ca.ibm.com> wrote:
>
> The new Governing Board is taking longer than expected to establish, and while progress on the bylaws is slower than expected, it seems prudent to get the bylaws accepted and in place ahead of asking for the new Board's
> approval to establish the OpenJDK8 project.

Presumably because only then does the board get the decision on the
project rather than its associated group:
http://openjdk.java.net/projects/
So this is a case of the unelected board usurping power from the
existing devolved group system.

> The OpenJDK project has been operating essentially without any rules and the motivation for individuals within the project to behave in a more open way has been non-existent.

There are plenty of interim rules in place that seem to be working
fine.  They have actually proved an unnecessary bureaucratic burden in
some cases, given the tiny external contribution to OpenJDK.  From a
personal standpoint, the creation of more rules, especially by an
unelected board, does not make me want 'to behave in a more open way'
but instead to interact with the project as little as possible.  I
fear these new rules may hurt those already working openly on the
project while doing little to correct the behaviour of others.

> Open behavior should be awarded and closed behavior should be exposed. Without a set of bylaws, acting upon these simple rules is very difficult. I agree it may seem counter-intuitive, but at the moment, we discussed it and > felt that getting a set of bylaws approved is a priority to begin changing this inherent culture within that will take much more time than simply opening a project. Open development, as you noted yourself, is much more than
> hacking code. Bugs, testcases, build, infrastructure, etc are all necessary items needed for open development and something that the board is committed to providing. We need to start somewhere and want OpenJDK8 to start > under the appropriate governance.
>

I agree open behaviour needs to be much more encouraged and is a major
problem within the project.  But the problem there is Oracle, and
preventing them from having a repositories for OpenJDK8 work publicly
may have the opposite effect of just giving them a legitimate reason
("the GB won't let us") to work on a proprietary fork.  Sadly, they
hold pretty much all the cards here.
--
Andrew :-)

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