Call for Discussion: New Project: Skara -- investigating source code management options for the JDK sources

[Peter Lawrey]

On 27 July 2018 at 12:11, Mario Torre <neugens at redhat.com> wrote:

>
> After all, it's not that hard to become a committer really, and the
> barrier being the same with or without GitHub,


My impressions is, even for some of the most technical Java Champions it is
impossible to become a committer.

I have asked Java Champions who are actively working in the JVM or
contributing directly but they found it easier to find/hire someone else to
do the committing than become a committer.

I have;
 - the most answers for Java and JVM on StackOverflow,
 - two high performance open source libraries with over 1,000 stars on
Github,
 - another library which got downloaded 6 million times last month
 - built a self funded business which made £2.5m last year.

I am eager to contribute, can code and understand business needs, but I
have no idea how to become a committer without being hired into the JVM
development team.

What works for me is that some committers read my blog so things I write
about get fixed in the next version indirectly.

I would agree that the choice of technology is not the biggest barrier to
entry.
What we would need is a change of process if we are going to open up
OpenJDK.
A new platform might bring a change of mind set.

BTW I don't think it should be easy to be a committer.

Regards,
Peter.