Discussion proposal: Who the heck is in charge, anyway?

[Tim Ellison]

Hi Andrew,

Getting some clarity and better understanding of expectations here is
important.  I'd like to see this included in the workshop agenda and
participate in the session too.

Regards,
Tim

On 19/07/2018 10:12, Andrew Haley wrote:
> This topic is related to some of the things others have been saying,
> but is broader.
> 
> Despite being on on the OpenJDK Governing Board and the Java SE expert
> group, it's still not clear to me who is guiding the development of
> the Java platform.  Some of the possible candidates are:
> 
> The JCP executive
> The OpenJDK Java SE project lead
> The JCP Java SE expert group
> A few influential and knowledgeable individuals
> JCP: Various JSR contributors
> OpenJDK: Various JEP contributors
> Closed discussion groups within Oracle and elsewhere
> All of the voters on mail.openjdk.java.net
> 
> The JCP Java SE expert group doesn't really have the ability to guide
> anything because all it can do is reject proposals, and by then it is
> much too late: everything has already been integrated, and to reject
> anything would cause huge disruption.  JEPs have a fairly low barrier
> to creation, and although there is a higher bar for targeting, it's
> not clear to me that there is an overall design for the API: changes
> are adopted piecemeal as they arrive.
> 
> In a sense this is the free software way: the people who do the work
> get to decide what work gets done.  Historically, this has seemed to
> work a lot better than one might reasonably expect, because by and
> large people want to co-operate, so they do.
> 
> However, there is a considerable risk to OpenJDK contributors.  It's
> quite possible that a JEP might be accepted, a substantial amount of
> work done, and then the work blocked at the targeting stage, with a
> contributor left in limbo.
> 
> So, I'd like to discuss the decision-making structure we have,
> hopefully find out a bit more about how it's supposed to work, and
> think about whether it's the structure we need to go forward.
>