OpenJDK Community Bylaws and Governing Board

[Mike Milinkovich]

Mark,

Thanks for the clarification.

At the moment, I don't actually know if Oracle thinks this infrastructure is
something they control, or if it's something the community controls. The
Bylaws are actually ambiguous on that point. I promise to find an answer.

Given that the starting point is that the majority of the committers work
for them, Oracle obviously has some skin in that game. 

I hope that it is something the community controls. At least to the point
where a consensus for change can force a response. That said, having gone
through several similar infrastructure transitions at Eclipse, I think this
example could be a very ticklish case. A lot of development infrastructure
becomes engrained in work flows and even team culture. Change is not easy
when that's true. Especially when there is time pressure to ship releases.

If the answer to the question is that the community controls the
infrastructure, I expect that an Infrastructure Group which sponsored a
collection of projects working in the space would be how the topic would be
handled under these Bylaws. Or alternatively the OpenJDK Members Group or
the Board Group could sponsor such projects.


> Thanks for participating in the discussion.
> 
> On Sun, February 6, 2011 04:50, Mike Milinkovich wrote:
> > Mark also raised the point that " It also doesn't state where this
> > infrastructure comes from or who maintains it." I expect that the answer
> > is Oracle. But I think that putting this level of detail into the Bylaws
> > would be a mistake, as it is an execution matter not a governance rule.
> 
> I guess I wasn't very clear explaining. My point is mainly that the
> governance bylaws should either explain how the community "owns" the
> processes, or if the community isn't really in control over the
> processes described, then it shouldn't be in the bylaws (since it
> will only lead to frustration that it might be something we think
> we control, but ultimately will be vetoed outside the normal
> processes.)
> 
> Lets give a concrete example. We are in desperate need of a better
> bugtracker. What would the process be if someone volunteered to
> set one up? How would "control" be delegated to this volunteer, who
> gets to appoint the bug-masters, and how would the governance board
> accept or reject donations for hosting and/or machines for this purpose?
> 
> If this is this a process that the community really controls, and we
> can come up with a process for doing that. Then infrastructure
> definitely needs to be mentioned in the bylaws. But if this isn't
> something controlled by the participants, but something
> dictated/controlled outside of the democratic process, then it is
> better to just leave it out (or codify that this isn't up for
> community participation).
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Mark