CFV: New OpenJDK Members Group Member: Simon Tooke

[Andrew Hughes]

On 28/05/2020 20:31, Kim Barrett wrote:
> vote: veto
> 
>> On May 28, 2020, at 4:06 AM, Andrew Hughes <gnu.andrew at redhat.com> wrote:
>> not everyone's contribution to OpenJDK takes the form of regular
>> commits.
> 
> This is true, but the CFV didn't call out significant other contributions. 
> 
>> Is being a committer not enough to be considered a member of the
>> community?
> 
> There is a distinction between the "Member" (capitalized) role and
> being a "member" of the OpenJDK community.  This is similar to the
> distinction between being a "Reviewer" (capitalized) and a "reviewer".

Right, I get that. It doesn't really answer the question though.

> 
>> I'm a little concerned that the barrier is being set too high
>> here and, given the main purpose to being an OpenJDK member is to gain
>> voting rights, we risk disenfranchising a significant proportion of
>> those working on OpenJDK. Looking through other recent membership votes,
>> there are some that seem to have taken place relatively late, unless we
>> expect all members to have hundreds of changesets.
> 
> It's a valid concern that valuable members (lowercase) of the
> community might be disenfranchised because monitoring for potential
> Member status isn't on the top of most folks' priorities. Sometimes
> someone else notices and nominates, sometimes one needs to ask.  It
> might be nice to have a better answer, but I don't know of one.

My suggestion would be that, if we are considering Reviewer status as a
requirement for Member status, then the latter could be awarded when a
successful vote takes place for the former. The registrar has to update
the person to Reviewer status anyway. It would be quite simple to add
them to the Members group at this time and forego the additional vote
for many cases.

> 
>> I could accept the need for a minimum status of reviewer status for
>> membership, if that was clearly stated and consistently applied. As it
>> stands, the initial OpenJDK members group was populated not from the
>> pool of reviewers, but from those with group membership [1]. I remember
>> this clearly myself, because I recall transitioning to the bylaws with
>> reviewer status, but not as a member of this group. I instead had to
>> find someone who was and get them to nominate me, which is perhaps why
>> it has always seemed a little peculiar to me going forward.
> 
> I can’t speak to the initial process; I wasn’t around then.
> 
> But asking someone for a nomination doesn’t seem especially onerous to me,
> on either side of the question.

It's not the onerous nature that was the issue so as much as the bizarre
situation of having Reviewer status, but not Member status by virtue of
not being in a group.

Equally, there were people given Member status without even authorship,
never mind Reviewer status.

> 
>> In short, it would be good to finally get this clarified and agree on
>> clear criteria for OpenJDK members. I'll be happy to withdraw these
>> votes at that time, if the criteria agreed upon is not met by Alex & Simon.
> 
> This seems relatively clear, as such things go.
> https://openjdk.java.net/groups/members/
> "As a rough guide, a candidate should be a Member of at least one
> Group, or a Reviewer or Project Lead of at least one Project, and make
> regular and significant contributions to that Group or Project for at
> least one year before being nominated to be an OpenJDK Member."
> 
> Based on the information provided in the CFV, I think none of the
> above criteria are met.  Hence my veto.

Well, that's a guideline, not a rule. I also wasn't even aware of this
until recently, because it's not part of the bylaws, but hidden away on
another page.

But if we're going to take this as a pseudo-rule, then I'll withdraw
these votes at this time and re-apply when they reach Reviewer status.

Interestingly, the group side of this seems to suggest that one can be a
Member if one becomes a member of a group and makes "regular
contributions" to it. That seems to suggest that there is a possible
route that doesn't involve committing any code, if these "contributions"
are measured in some other form.

> 
>> Incidentally, the bylaws also still dictate automatic expiration after a
>> year [2] so, in theory, none of us are OpenJDK members any more and
>> can't propose anyone to become one... ;)
> 
> This was discussed and addressed by the Governing Board:
> https://openjdk.java.net/groups/gb/minutes/2019-05-30
> 

Thanks. I hadn't seen that.
-- 
Andrew :)

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

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