CFV: New OpenJDK Members Group Member: Simon Tooke

[Kim Barrett]

> On Jun 7, 2020, at 12:44 PM, Andrew Hughes <gnu.andrew at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> 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.

Sure it does, in the context of the definition of Member and how that
status is conferred. As David said, becoming a committer has a
relatively low threshold; the described threshold for becoming a
Member is substantially higher.

>>> 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 don't think anyone has proposed that Reviewer status is a
requirement for becoming a Member. I also think Reviewer status need
not be a sufficient criteria. Reviewer status provides a partial
indication of the level of involvement and contribution that is
considered necessary to be granted Member status. I think there are
other ways to make "significant contributions" that don't lead to
Reviewer status.

And the two should not be conflated. Groups have members. Projects
have Reviewers. Those organizational categories and their associated
roles are distinct according to the Bylaws.  (I can't comment on the
rationale behind that separation; I'm a relative newcomer and don't
have the relevant historical information.)

Even if there was an agreement to link them that way, there is the
question of which Group(s) the newly minted Project Reviewer should be
added to.

> 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.

It's only bizarre if one considers the organizational structure
described by the Bylaws, including the distinction between Groups and
Projects, to be problematic.

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

The Bylaws describe the process for initial creation of a Group,
including the bootstrapping of the initial Members list by the Group's
Lead. Presumably the Lead selects people who seem likely to be
significant contributors, since the Group didn't previously exist to
contribute toward.