OpenJDK Community Bylaws and Governing Board

[mark.reinhold at oracle.com]

A draft of the OpenJDK Community Bylaws is now available [1].

After IBM and then Apple joined the OpenJDK Community last fall it became
clear that it was time to revive the effort to create a written set of
rules by which the Community will operate.  This document was written in
collaboration with John Duimovich and Jason Gartner of IBM, Prof. Doug
Lea of SUNY Oswego, Mike Milinkovich of Eclipse, and Adam Messinger of
Oracle.

We didn't start this effort from scratch.  The draft draws upon the
earlier work of the Sun-chartered OpenJDK Interim Governance Board and
has exactly the same goal: To be a written set of rules that will foster
the long-term health and growth of the OpenJDK Community by enabling and
encouraging its members to act in an open, transparent, and meritocratic
manner.  We've attempted to define efficient, lightweight rules that are
aligned with how the Community operates today, under the interim
guidelines for Groups and Projects [2,3] established in 2007.

This is a starting point, not a done deal.  There are numerous bugs and
missed corner cases in this draft and, no doubt, even more numerous ways
in which it can be improved.  Please send questions, comments, and
suggestions to the gb-discuss list [4].  (If you haven't already
subscribed to that list then please do so first [5], otherwise your
message will be discarded as spam.)

I'll revise the draft in response to comments over the next four weeks,
until 3 March 2011.  After the draft is finished it will be offered to
OpenJDK Community members for ratification via an appropriate democratic
process.

The Bylaws define a Governing Board which "oversees the structure,
operation, and overall health of the Community.  It upholds and maintains
these Bylaws, resolves procedural disputes, and ensures that sufficient
infrastructure is available to Community members.  The Governing Board
has no direct authority over technical or release decisions."

The members of the initial Governing Board are:

  - Adam Messinger (Chair, Oracle),
  - Jason Gartner (Vice Chair, IBM),
  - Prof. Doug Lea (At-Large, SUNY Oswego),
  - Mike Milinkovich (At-Large, Eclipse), and
  - Yours truly (OpenJDK Lead, Oracle).

At-Large members serve for a term of one calendar year.  After the first
year they'll be nominated and elected by a democratic process open to all
key members of the Community.

- Mark


[1] http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~mr/bylaws/draft-openjdk-bylaws-07.html
[2] http://openjdk.java.net/groups
[3] http://openjdk.java.net/projects
[4] gb DASH discuss AT openjdk DOT java DOT net
[5] http://mail.openjdk.java.net/mailman/listinfo/gb-discuss