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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]