Attached please find the minutes of the Governing Board's meeting
on 2011/5/12. They're also available on the web:
http://openjdk.java.net/groups/gb/minutes/2011-05-12
Respectfully submitted,
- Mark
OpenJDK Governing Board Minutes: 2011/5/12
==========================================
The OpenJDK Governing Board met via conference call on Thursday, 12 May
2011 at 15:00 UTC with the following agenda:
1. Infrastructure update from Oracle
2. Summary of upcoming process work
3. Status update on Oracle legal work
Three Board members were present at the start: Doug Lea, Adam Messinger,
and Mark Reinhold. Mike Milinkovich sent his regrets in advance.
Two Observers were present at the start: Andrew Haley and Georges Saab.
John Duimovich joined the call about 15 minutes late.
The intent of these minutes is to capture the conversational flow of the
Board's discussion and also to record decisions. If you are interested
only in the latter then search for the word "AGREED" throughout the text.
1. Infrastructure update from Oracle
------------------------------------
Mohan Pakkurti of Oracle was invited to give an update. Mohan introduced
himself as working for Georges and being responsible for Oracle's OpenJDK
infrastructure. Mohan prepared a [set of slides][1] for the Board and
provided a status update on each topic described therein.
Most of the discussion revolved around the selection of a bug-tracking
system, an effort which has been in progress for some months now.
Andrew asked how it could work to have an external bug system for OpenJDK
that's separate from Oracle's internal bug system. Georges replied that
Oracle's intent is not to have separate bug systems with duplicate
information but rather for Oracle engineers to use the new, open system
for all the work they do in OpenJDK. Mark elaborated, explaining that
Oracle engineers would still use an internal system for customer records
and other confidential data, and that internal bug reports would link to
open bug reports as needed.
Georges stated that it is Oracle's intent to have the new bug-tracking
system in place as early in the development of JDK 8 as possible, but not
so early as to disrupt the completion of JDK 7. Doug observed that these
constraints suggest it will be in place early in August 2011. Georges
confirmed that to be the goal, and that Oracle is actively funding work
toward that goal, but given the number of moving parts there is no hard
and fast guaranteed date.
Mohan then brought up the topic of code-review systems, stating that he
had started looking into this as well and would shortly initiate an open
discussion on the choice of such a system. Andrew said that in his view
this is one of the most important systems for all contributors, and so
any discussion about choosing one must be highly visible.
This segued into a general discussion of which mailing lists should be
used for infrastructure-related topics. Mark asked if the Board would
prefer to see all infrastructure traffic on a single list, perhaps the
widely-read general discussion list. This was informally agreed to be
unnecessary, given that it would probably annoy many subscribers. It
was suggested instead that when infrastructure discussions take place
on more-specific lists, e.g., web-discuss, then quick references to such
discussions should be posted to the general discussion list and perhaps
a few other widely-read lists as appropriate in order to ensure broad
visibility.
Moving on, Mohan stated that Project Kenai is Oracle's preferred platform
for the open-source communities it sponsors, and Georges explained
further that there is some internal pressure to migrate OpenJDK to that
platform. Mark explained how he didn't think this would be an ideal
solution, given that Kenai's design center is that of a large community
of mostly-unrelated projects along the lines of java.net or SourceForge.
Doug said that he'd thought that Kenai specifically designed for OpenJDK,
but then said he was quickly dissuaded after looking at it in real time
during the call.
Andrew asked what could be done to make it easy for a contributor not
associated with any of our companies to work on a bug and offer a fix,
stressing that this is as much a process issue as it is an infrastructure
issue. Doug observed that we can probably avoid a fair amount process
documentation just by having good infrastructure, and in particular by
having bug-tracking and code-review systems that are deeply integrated.
Georges asked if anyone had feedback on the two candidate bug systems,
Bugzilla and JIRA. Doug said that he has used both a little bit and
mildly prefers JIRA. John said that he and his team use JIRA and like
it, but he doesn't have a strong preference.
Andrew thanked Mohan for his efforts and noted that the community is
eager to benefit from his work.
2. Summary of upcoming process work
-----------------------------------
This topic was moved to next week's agenda due to time constraints.
3. Status update on Oracle legal work
-------------------------------------
Adam reported that Oracle's legal department had completed its review of
the OpenJDK Community Bylaws, requesting only the few minor changes which
had earlier been communicated to the Board by Mark. In order for the new
Bylaws draft to be published Adam now only needs to get approval from his
EVP; he expects that to take less than a week.
Adam asked the other Board members to relay their feedback on these minor
changes as soon as possible. Mike had already given his approval via
e-mail. Doug immediately approved the changes. John said that IBM would
review the changes promptly.
Doug asked about the status of revising the Oracle Contributor Agreement
(OCA). Mark replied that a new full-time hire at Oracle will be driving
that process forward, and that Doug should hear from him soon.
[1]:
http://openjdk.java.net/groups/gb/minutes/files/openjdk-infrastructure-update-2011-05-11.pdf
