Coherent release process

[Andrew Hughes]

----- Original Message -----
> 
> 
> On 20.11.2015 04:39, Andrew Hughes wrote:
> >> The corresponding Project's mailing list, jdk8u-dev, is the right place
> >> to ask questions about JDK 8 Updates in OpenJDK. The JDK 8 Project has
> >> completed its work with the JDK 8 GA a while ago, so this list is
> >> largely dormant.
> >>
> >
> > Is there a good reason for this practice?
> 
> Yes.
> 
> A JDK Release Project like JDK 8 is very different from a JDK 8 Updates
> Project, even though one provides the source code necessary to seed the
> other.
> 
> As a trivial example of the differences, a JDK Release Project works
> towards a single release, and then it's done. A JDK Updates Project
> tends to work on multiple releases in parallel, provided at a higher
> frequency. Accordingly, the processes, the development life cycle, etc.
> are quite different. It's much simpler to start from a clean slate in a
> new Project, then to retrofit an existing one for a new purpose.
> 
> > Having seen this happen with
> > both 7/7u and 8/8u mailing lists, it would seem to make sense to keep
> > one mailing list instead when 9 goes GA, to avoid this confusion.
> 
> No.
> 
> Please see http://openjdk.java.net/projects/ : "A Project may have web
> content, one or more file repositories, and one or more mailing lists"
> 
> Mailing lists are Project-specific. Once a Project finishes its work,
> its mailing list(s) eventually gets dormant and archived, rather than
> reused for other Projects. See
> http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/coin-dev/2015-April/003487.html
> for an example.
> 
> cheers,
> dalibor topic
> 

I'm well aware of how things currently operate. However, in practice,
this causes confusion for those not working on OpenJDK every day and could
be improved. I'm not aware of any other FOSS project that endlessly spawns
new mailing lists for the sake of some overly-bureaucratic rules, and it
would be nice to see the OpenJDK project acknowledge that this is problematic
and adjust accordingly.

Thanks,
-- 
Andrew :)

Senior Free Java Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc. (http://www.redhat.com)

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