JSR mailing lists

[Stephen Colebourne]

On 16 August 2011 09:04, Ben Evans <benjamin.john.evans at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 1:55 AM, Stephen Colebourne <scolebourne at joda.org>
>> Not really. If you want to help Java and further your idea, then this
>> list is all there is. Even if Oracle do eventually manage to publish
>> their pointlessly and inappropriately private JSR lists, they may be
>> read-only.
>
> Please see the text of JSR 348. The intention is to conduct all technical
> business of
> the EG on a publicly-visible mailing list going forward, and several other
> EGs now have
> public Observer aliases (hence my question about this group).
>
> There are IP and patent concerns which many corporate members of the EC
> (including,
> but not limited to Oracle) feel carries too much risk (and places too much
> burden on
> the spec lead) to allow completely open participation when it comes to
> detailed design
> and implementation in OpenJDK.
>
> There are efforts underway to fix as many of the problems here as possible.
> I fail to
> see what purpose banging the drum about problems which were inherited from
> Sun,
> and which people are actively trying to fix (on the most accelerated
> timescale which
> the current form of the JCP allows us), serves.

Were I "banging the drum"on the  private mailing list topic I would
have been making a large noise for very many months (or is it years
now?). I have chosen not to, as I understand some of the background
relating to why they are not public and I've pretty much given up hope
of ever seeing them anyway.

In fact the LJC itself said on the Java SE 7 vote:
"We note that the archives for some of the Expert Groups that comprise
this JSR have not yet been made public, despite a promise from Oracle
to do so. We do not feel that this is appropriate for a public and
open standards body. In particular, Oracle's silence as to why the
archives have not been made public is harmful to community
participation, i.e. the community has no access to historical
technical discussions, which are vital for participating in future
Java language initiatives. "

By comparison, I'd argue my comment was really rather restrained.

JSR 348 is not relevant here either. Oracle (corporately) has,
following Sun's example, shown blatent disregard for the legal
paperwork it signs at the JCP (which is a department of Oracle, not an
independent organisation) and for the related verbal promises it
makes. JSR 348 is just another piece of paper trying to legitimise a
"standards body" where you are not allowed to implement some of the
standards. Just because JSR 348 says something does not mean it will
happen - you'd have to be very naive to belive otherwise.

Note that none of this should reflect on the engineers at Oracle who
continue to do the best they can in the situation. Nor is this mailing
list an especially good place to discuss the wider issues of this
topic.

Stephen