Hello all, I apology for the long mail...
Is this draft we are voting now the really really final or there can be still some time for discussion? I ask because I'm in strong doubt if to vote YES because it can be a start to build something that will work together with the Community, or to ABSTAIN, like my deep feelings suggest, bot to avoid a conflict of interest from my side, but especially because I still think those rules are not completely fair. I will explain this better in my vote if needed, however, I think we should have some small discussion now if this is possible. The GB is a wonderful idea. I believe is an entity that is definitely needed and welcomed, and I'm very happy with the efforts Oracle and especially you, Mark, are putting into it. However, I still feel something is not completely in the right place. Don't get me wrong, please. I often criticised Oracle for not doing well (in my opinion of course), but I was also always was the first to applaud when things worked in the right direction, acknowledging that Oracle, no matter how different the point of views are, is always sitting next to us in the same room discussing the rules of the game. All my consideration, of course, are from the point of view of the Community, and I appreciate the efforts (and the wonderful progress done). I honestly feel that Oracle, and I want to say it here again, has all the rights to control OpenJDK; I also completely trust Oracle in his role as Steward for the OpenJDK project. Beside, my point of view with disputes like the JCP (and TKC access) are well known. Said that, there are still things we need to improve, because those rights nobody can deny to Oracle, are also really big responsibilities. The way the GB is right now, it simply states (or it sounds like that) that Oracle has all the rights and that those are not shared with the community, not in a fair way, at least. I'm not as much convinced like Mark (Wielaard) that Oracle should behave in a completely agnostic way toward the patents and the rights on the code that it has. Indeed, Oracle is investing so much efforts and engineering time on this, when it could as easily just kill the project and not care. Probably nobody would be able to develop OpenJDK, probably not. Realistically, though, and I may be wrong on this point of course, but is clear to me that this is a scenario nobody wants, and with reasons. But I still feel there are some problems with the current GB rules that should be addressed, because otherwise the risk is that we will have an OpenJDK project were contribution from external developers will always be difficult or next to impossible (and I speak like the guy that did several of those contributions, but all the time waiting from 4 to 6 months before a simple patch to be accepted, let alone part of Cacio that went in after a couple of years. Yeah, I have patience, but this is too much a difficult process, and the GB needs to address this as well). I summarize the points Mark highlighted many times, and that this GB does not address in my opinion: * Oracle has an explicit right to do anything by demanding every contributor sign all rights to them. * There are no rules to add anything to the code base to which Oracle doesn't get all rights, except if Oracle does it (see the recent xml code drops for example, while keeping out stuff like rhino and icedtea-web) * Oracle has a veto on everything through their appointment of the JDK project technical lead (we all love Mark Reinhold, and we trust, and he has always demonstrated, that he will try to do the right thing, but what if his role changes at some point?) The ringing bell, although it was probably and honest communication mistake, like I already said on this same list in a different thread, is the new jdk7 forests. How fully in accordance with these rules a new project was accepted for jdk7 updates? Now this project might or might not be actually a good idea. The fact that we had this project accepted without public discussion, when all we got was some vague proposal from Oracle (bad Dalibor!!!) without any real discussion, and then a quick "hurray! we approved it under 24 hours". Those things should not happen. The Community has safe alternatives, of course: OpenJDK for everything official, and IcedTea for the real work. Do we want this? My feeling is that the rules of the current GB will not change this situation, so voting YES will just be a way to normalise a situation that is not really nice, where we will end up condoning what was a perhaps needed, but definitely imposed, new board with new rules, and at the end of the day, claim that those rules are fair because the Community supports them. Just to be clear once more, I do believe Oracle has all the rights to do this, IcedTea and the GPL will always offer an alternative. My question, and doubt, is if this is indeed the only possible way to solve this situation, and if there is really no common ground for discussion. Cheers, Mario 2011/6/20 Dalibor Topic <dalibor.to...@oracle.com>: > On 6/17/11 8:22 PM, mark.reinh...@oracle.com wrote: >> 2011/6/13 8:58 -0700, mark.reinh...@oracle.com: >>> The vote to ratify the OpenJDK Community Bylaws will start at 16:00 UTC >>> on Tuesday, 14 June 2011 [1] and end at the same time two weeks later, >>> on Tuesday 28 June 2011. >>> >>> For more information please see: >>> >>> http://openjdk.java.net/poll/bylaws-ratification >> >> FYI: I've arranged for the current results to be displayed on that page. > > Thanks for doing that - it's pretty neat. > > cheers, > dalibor topic > > -- > Oracle <http://www.oracle.com> > Dalibor Topic | Java F/OSS Ambassador > Phone: +494023646738 <tel:+494023646738> | Mobile: +491772664192 > <tel:+491772664192> > Oracle Java Platform Group > > ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG | Nagelsweg 55 | 20097 Hamburg > > ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG > Hauptverwaltung: Riesstr. 25, D-80992 München > Registergericht: Amtsgericht München, HRA 95603 > > Komplementärin: ORACLE Deutschland Verwaltung B.V. > Hertogswetering 163/167, 3543 AS Utrecht, Niederlande > Handelsregister der Handelskammer Midden-Niederlande, Nr. 30143697 > Geschäftsführer: Jürgen Kunz, Marcel van de Molen, Alexander van der Ven > > Green Oracle <http://www.oracle.com/commitment> Oracle is committed to > developing practices and products that help protect the environment > -- pgp key: http://subkeys.pgp.net/ PGP Key ID: 80F240CF Fingerprint: BA39 9666 94EC 8B73 27FA FC7C 4086 63E3 80F2 40CF IcedRobot: www.icedrobot.org Proud GNU Classpath developer: http://www.classpath.org/ Read About us at: http://planet.classpath.org OpenJDK: http://openjdk.java.net/projects/caciocavallo/ Please, support open standards: http://endsoftpatents.org/
