Call for Discussion: Group Consolidation: Client Libraries Group

[Philip Race]

I hereby propose the creation of the Client Libraries Group which is a
consolidation of the interests and active members of the existing AWT 
[0], 2D
[1], Swing [2], and Sound [3] Groups, with myself as the Lead.  I further
propose the simultaneous dissolution of these historic Groups.

Since at least 2015, there have been periodic discussions about whether the
various OpenJDK client Groups should be consolidated.  In that time, there
have been no objections so I'd like to move this proposal forward.

The Client Libraries Group would be the consolidation of the existing 
AWT, 2D,
Swing, and Sound Groups.  These individual Groups were created at the 2007
launch of OpenJDK partially following the organizational structure of Sun's
existing development groups, which somewhat followed the separate nature of
each of these areas.

At least one Group (Sound), has always been too small an area to attract
sufficient interest to justify a Group but it became one since it didn't
obviously belong to another Group.  While individual Group members 
continue to
focus in their specialization areas, there has been an increasing overlap in
code responsibilities and the individuals working on them.  Some of this
became apparent in the OSX port as AWT members operated as de facto 
members of
Swing and so forth.  The distinction has been further blurred as development
has moved from separate Group repository and integration practices to a 
single
JDK-wide repository and CI model under GitHub.  Unifying these Groups will
more realistically reflect the actual community and make it more apparent
where sub-areas such as sound, beans, and accessibility should be discussed.

The new Group will sponsor the OpenJFX [4] and Lanai [5] Projects. The
long-inactive Harfbuzz [6], Framebuffer Toolkit [7] and XRender Pipeline [8]
Projects will be dissolved by virtue of losing their sponsoring Group.  Over
time the Group's mailing lists, static web pages, etc. will be coalesced at
the discretion of the Lead.

For those who don't know me I (Phil) am the OpenJDK Group Lead for the 2D
and Sound Groups and the Lead of the Lanai Project.
I have been a member of the Java 2D graphics team on JDK since
1999 and have contributed hundreds, if not thousands, of changes to 
client code
over that period.  I was the specification lead for JSR 15 Image I/O
Framework Specification and JSR 6 Unified Printing API.  In JDK 17, I lead
JEP 382 New macOS Rendering Pipeline.

The proposed set of initial members is the union of the members of the 2D,
AWT, Swing, and Sound Groups who have sent mail to at least one of the five
client-libs group lists (2d, awt, beans, sound, swing) or a client-libs
project list (lanai) anytime since Jan 2020.

     Alexander Scherbartiy (alexsch)
     Alexander Zuev (kizune)
     Alexander Zvegintsev (azvegint)
     Alexey Ushakov (avu)
     Jay DV (jdv)
     Laurent Bourges (ldayne)
     Peter Zhelezniakov (peterz)
     Sergey Bylokhov (serb)

Feedback from OpenJDK Project or Group members [9] is welcome.  If no
objections are raised, or if they're raised and satisfactorily answered, by
23:59 UTC on Wesdnesday, 16 June then I will ask the OpenJDK Lead to call a
Governing Board vote to simultaneously create the new Group and dissolve the
AWT, 2D, Swing, and Sound Groups as described in the Bylaws [10].

-Phil.

[0]: https://openjdk.java.net/census#awt
[1]: https://openjdk.java.net/census#2d
[2]: https://openjdk.java.net/census#swing
[3]: https://openjdk.java.net/census#sound
[4]: https://openjdk.java.net/census#openjfx
[5]: https://openjdk.java.net/census#lanai
[6]: https://openjdk.java.net/census#harfbuzz
[7]: https://openjdk.java.net/census#fbtoolkit
[8]: https://openjdk.java.net/census#xrender
[9]: https://openjdk.java.net/census
[10]: https://openjdk.java.net/bylaws#_4