Andrew C. Oliver wrote:

> have meritocratic consensus based communities.  The committers engaged
> in the legal agreement with sun cannot talk to the other
> committers about important decisions affecting the project and secondly
> the major decisions are made in the specification committee and
> not in the project itself.  Committers are promoted to the decision
> making process by an outside entity (sun) and not by their own community.


My understanding is that the NDA prevent those in the JCP from sharing with
the world - but AFAIK they can share it with other ASF members. 
If we could find a way to extend this to the whole PMC - then we can
improve a bit the communication problem.


Regarding the selection - I think it's up to ASF to set the policy 
on who will represent it in the various JCP groups. Right now it's "whoever
volunteers" - which is reasonable. There is no ASF policy that I know about
the responsibilities of those who represent the ASF in JCP - with regard to
sharing the info with at least the members in the interested PMC - and 
I think this is a problem.


As with any standard, the "decision making" is based on a group of 
people representing different interests. Apache does have a vote ( AFAIK ),
just like Sun or IBM. Projects should be able to participate - and 
we should find a way to apply the apache meritocracy and community rules
in our participation to JCP ( for example by a vote by committers who 
are affected or by PMCs ). 


In any case - your comment that the decision is made by a committee is
right, and it is the way things happen in all standard organizations that
I know. Even in Apache - the products are defined by a community of
committers, and the decisions are made by a consensus or majority vote.


> The communication bonds twart collaboration which degrades innovation.
> The JCP does not encourage innovative processes which Sun or
> the Spec lead might disagree with.

The spec is approved by a majority vote. I don't think standard goal should
be to "innovate" - but recognize common patterns and practices and set
ground rules.

As with any project - the quality of the participants and the quality of the
communication has a big effect on the end result. 


Costin


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