By-laws definition of "Member"

Dan Smith daniel.smith at oracle.com
Tue May 31 13:39:04 PDT 2011


The Q&A addresses this issue somewhat, but the root problem remains in the text: in "2. General Roles", "Participant" and "Contributor" are each defined.  The definition takes the form of a clear single sentence.  "OpenJDK Member" and "OpenJDK Lead", in contrast, are only _described_, not _defined_.

Here's what I'd suggest:

An OpenJDK Member is a Contributor who has been approved for OpenJDK Membership by a vote open to all existing OpenJDK Members.  OpenJDK Members typically have demonstrated a history ...

The OpenJDK Lead is an OpenJDK Member appointed by Oracle to direct the major efforts of the Community ...

I also find the connection between General Roles, Group Roles, and Project Roles to be confusing.  Might be nice to have something like (in the appropriate sections of "General Roles"):

- A Contributor may become a Group Member or a Project Author, Committer, Reviewer, or Lead.

- An OpenJDK Member may become a Group Lead.

(Along these lines, I question the wisdom of having two roles named "Member", neither of which being a subset of the other.  But I assume that terminology discussion has been had already, and this was its conclusion.)

A more general comment: in practice, it looks like OpenJDK Membership is only a prerequisite for fairly unusual activities: leading a group, setting up groups/projects, special votes, etc.  I'd expect that a typical technical contributor would not see a benefit in actively seeking membership, and so ultimately the OpenJDK Members Group will consist of a few Group Leads and people especially interested in governance.  Is this the intent, or at least an acceptable outcome?

—Dan




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