OpenJDK Governing Board Minutes: 2015/2/26

The OpenJDK Governing Board met via conference call on Thursday, 26 February 2015 at 16:00 UTC with the following agenda:

  1. Vulnerability Group (NDA/License)
  2. OpenJDK Member expiration
  3. OpenJDK Scorecard, 2014 edition
  4. Governing Board Election, 2015
  5. Any other business

Three Board members were present: Georges Saab, Doug Lea, and Mark Reinhold.

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.

0. Quorum

There was a brief discussion to determine whether three Board members constituted a quorum. According to the Bylaws:

A meeting of the Governing Board is considered quorate if a simple majority of its members are present; that is, more members are present than absent.

Three members were present and two were absent; therefore, the meeting was quorate.

1. Vulnerability Group (NDA/License)

Doug said he was very interested in hearing what the absent Board members thought about this item. Georges agreed, suggesting that this item be deferred until the additional Board members were present, perhaps later in the meeting.

2. OpenJDK Member expiration

Doug and Mark outlined the possibilities to implement OpenJDK Member expiration as described in the [Bylaws]:

  1. Continue without an implementation
  2. Change the Bylaws to eliminate expiration
  3. Expire Members as prescribed in the Bylaws

Mark indicated that his least favourite option was the second, since revising the Bylaws is (intentionally) an expensive exercise. He thought that there should be a mechanism to expire Members since it's odd to continue the memberships of people who have not contributed for an extended period of time.

Doug recalled supporting expiration and requested the implementation of a renewal mechanism that's very easy to use (e.g., go to a URL, click "renew"). He also recommended not enforcing the rule until such a mechanism is in place. Mark noted that the system used for the annual Governing Board Election could potentially be extended to support Member expiration.

The discussion then moved to timing. According to the Bylaws, expiration is after one year, with automatic renewal on request. There are two valid interpretations:

  1. Everybody gets a message on the anniversary of their membership.
  2. Everybody gets a message on the same specific date of the year.

AGREED: A simple mechanism to renew membership should be investigated (option 3). For the near term, the OpenJDK Community will continue without an implementation (option 1).

3. OpenJDK Scorecard, 2014 edition

The 2014 OpenJDK Scorecard survey was announced and is open. Georges reported that people are responding and a reminder would be sent to encourage participation. The survey was modified from last year's to specifically request feedback/comments on the survey itself.

4. Governing Board Election, 2015

Mark stated that he would send out a request for nominations for the Governing Board At-Large Members early in the first week of March. Two weeks later, the week of 16 March, the election will begin. The newly-elected At-Large Members will be installed on 1 April.

When asked his intentions, Doug replied that he thought service on the Governing Board was important and he would be happy to serve as long people wanted him to serve.

5. Any other business

After a short discussion it was decided that the Vulnerability Group agenda item should be postponed until a later meeting when all of the Board members could attend.

Doug asked for an update on the CCC. Georges assured him that lack of tangible progress should not be taken as a lack of desire; it's simply a matter of priorities. He said that consolidation of the JavaFX bug-reporting system was higher priority than the CCC because more people are affected. Georges also said that these problems weren't truly serial since more than one person was involved.

At this point the Board adjourned.