OpenJDK Community Bylaws and Governing Board

[Simon Phipps]

On 8 Feb 2011, at 21:36, Mike Milinkovich wrote:

> A theme that I've noticed in several comments is one which could be
> summarized as "the board needs to be bigger, with a more diverse
> representation". That is perfectly valid and actionable feedback and I've
> noted it. But I would also point out that it's not really a criticism of the
> draft Bylaws per se, as it is certainly possible to grow the board within
> the proposed governance framework.

This was feedback that MR and Joe received strongly in FOSDEM from the DevRoom. The previous interim Board ended up with seven members, and always had a majority of non-Sun employees on it - as in fact dictated by the OpenJDK Charter[1], in which Sun made a public commitment to the nature of the governance and set the absolute minimum baseline requirements for governance. I'd suggest the feedback does in fact fall within scope as the current draft does not fulfil the Charter requirements.

The Charter currently says:
> The Governance Board (“GB”) shall be comprised of seven natural persons. Three members shall be employees of Sun, and four shall be elected from the OpenJDK Community (“the Community”).


I suggest the draft be updated to comply with the commitment Oracle inherited from Sun. In particular, I strongly suggest the interim Board respect clauses 1.3 and the spirit of clause 7.1, modify the draft to reflect the Charter and have the non-Charter-compliant appointees occupy their seats only for the purposes of conducting an election.

Simon


[1] http://openjdk.java.net/legal/charter/ - note especially the amendment.