Attached please find the minutes of the Governing Board's meeting
on 2011/5/26. They're also available on the web:
http://openjdk.java.net/groups/gb/minutes/2011-05-26
Respectfully submitted,
- Mark
OpenJDK Governing Board Minutes: 2011/5/26
==========================================
The OpenJDK Governing Board met via conference call on Thursday, 19 May
2011 at 15:00 UTC with the following agenda:
1. Feedback on draft 9 of the Bylaws
2. Ratification vote
3. Bug database
4. Summary of upcoming process work
All Board members were present: Jason Gartner, Doug Lea, Adam Messinger,
Mike Milinkovich, and Mark Reinhold.
Two Observers were present at the start: John Duimovich and Andrew Haley.
Georges Saab joined the call about ten 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. Feedback on draft 9 of the Bylaws
------------------------------------
Mark reported that there had been little feedback, so far, on draft 9 of
the Bylaws.
Mike asked if there had been any feedback beyond that on the gb-discuss
mailing list; Mark said he'd received one comment privately. In reply
Mike suggested that the Board should give more weight to public comments
than to private comments. Andrew agreed, saying that we should encourage
those sending private feedback to re-send it to the public list. Doug
reminded the Board that some commenters prefer to remain anonymous since
they don't want it to be known that they're thinking about becoming
Contributors. Mark asked whether all private feedback should be ignored;
Jason replied that since we're doing all we can to be public and open,
it's only reasonable that people should provide feedback in the same
manner.
At the end of this discussion the general sense of the Board was that
public feedback is strongly preferred but private feedback should not be
ignored.
Mark asked if the Board was concerned about the small amount of feedback
received. Andrew noted that he was himself finding it difficult to set
aside the time required to review the Bylaws in detail, so perhaps other
reviewers just haven't had the time yet. Adam thought it likely that the
level of feedback reflects the reality of the OpenJDK Community: Most
people would rather write code than worry about politics. Mike suggested
reminding people, via e-mail, of the deadline for feedback; Mark agreed
to send that later the same day.
2. Ratification vote
--------------------
Mark presented the following graph of contributions over time, based upon
the content of all the OpenJDK Mercurial repositories as of 2011/5/24:
16 | 94 89 73 57
14 | 98 94 77 61
12 | 103 99 83 67
10 | 108 105 93 73
8 | 114 112 98 78
5 | 129 127 112 88
4 | 135 131 116 94
2 | 163 159 144 127
1 | 180 176 158 143
--------------------
4y 3y 2y 1y
In this graph the Y axis is the minimum number of unique nontrivial
(i.e., non-merge, non-tag) changesets across all repositories. The X
axis is time in years, going backwards from today (i.e., the leftmost
column is the longest ago). The sample at (x, y) is the number of
contributors who created at least y unique changesets over the past
x years.
The Board discussed various durations and changeset-count thresholds,
trying to come up with a combination that would tend to admit only
serious contributors while not going so far as to limit the electorate
to just those "old hands" who have been contributing from the start.
It was eventually
> AGREED: The Ratification Electorate will be composed of those
Contributors who have created at least five unique nontrivial
changesets in the OpenJDK Mercurial repositories in the two
years preceding the start of the Ratification Vote.
The discussion then turned to the mechanics of the vote. Mark suggested
that the simplest thing to do is an e-mail-based vote, using a restricted
mailing list to which only members of the Electorate are allowed to post.
He then asked whether individual votes should be public or private. It
was quickly agreed that votes should be public, at least once the vote is
over. Adam then suggested that votes should be public from the moment
they're cast, since keeping them secret until the end could theoretically
give Oracle an information advantage. Mark agreed with Adam and so did
Jason, pointing out that someone who wants to control when their vote
becomes visible can just wait until the very end of the voting period.
Hence it was
> AGREED: Votes will be cast by sending e-mail to a public mailing list.
Messages from anyone who is not a member of the Ratification Electorate
will be discarded. Votes will be publicly visible at the time they are
cast.
3. Bug database
---------------
Mike requested this agenda item in response to a related discussion on
the [general-discussion list][dl]. He wanted to know who should be
allowed to submit bug reports, observing that he does not know of any
open-source community that restricts the general public from submitting
bugs, and that submitting bugs is a great way for new people to get
started in a community.
Doug agreed with Mike, pointing out that some level of access control is
inevitable, if only to combat spam and to conceal security bugs, but that
otherwise he doesn't want the system to have any hidden process
obstructions such as those in the present closed system.
Adam agreed that outsiders should be able to submit bugs, but such bugs
might not necessarily become public right away if they're security bugs.
Allowing only Contributors to submit bugs would be setting the bar too
high, but making it open to absolutely anyone might be setting the bar
too low.
Jason agreed on the need for a filtering process but said that otherwise
the system should be as open as possible, arguing that we especially need
to encourage "here's a bug, and here's a fix" reports from newcomers.
Mark observed that the OpenJDK Community does not itself ship end-user
binaries, and wondered whether this would cause confusion. If someone
finds a bug in their JRE should they submit it to Red Hat, to Oracle,
to IBM, or to OpenJDK? Mike argued that as a multi-vendor community we
should want all bugs to come to OpenJDK. John explained that if IBM
customers submit bugs to IBM that are really in OpenJDK then IBM would
refile them in OpenJDK. Andrew said that in that kind of situation at
Red Hat they generally ask the filer to resubmit the bug upstream.
Mike argued that it should be possible to submit a bug without having to
sign the OCA. Mark replied that he knew of no legal requirement for the
OCA in that case.
By the end of the discussion the general sense of the Board was that:
- One shouldn't have to be a Contributor in order to submit or update
a bug;
- It's okay to require a new bug submitter to agree to a terms-of-use
document and provide e-mail contact information; and
- Some amount of filtering and triage to reduce spam and keep security
bugs concealed is acceptable.
4. Summary of upcoming process work
-----------------------------------
This topic was, yet again, deferred to the next meeting due to time
constraints.
At this point the Board adjourned.
[dl]: http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/discuss/2011-May/001840.html
