OpenJDK Governing Board Minutes: 2016/10/20

The OpenJDK Governing Board met via conference call on Thursday, 20 October 2016 at 16:00 UTC with the following agenda:

  1. Vulnerability Group (NDA/License)
  2. JDK 9 schedule and Jigsaw issues
  3. Any other business

Four Board members were present: Georges Saab, Andrew Haley, 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.

1. Vulnerability Group (NDA/License)

Georges began the meeting saying that IBM was unable to join, however quorum was achieved. He was pleased to report that he had recently received the latest draft NDA/License from Oracle Legal. It would be sent to Red Hat, IBM and SAP for further evaluation. After that, the Governing Board (GB) would review the Vulnerability Group proposal which was expected to include the Group's structure and communication plan. He reminded GB that the Group required some private communication, unlike a typical OpenJDK Group.

Andrew asked whether there were objections to adding Azul to the list of early evaluators. Georges noted that there would be a time to receive their comments and inquired about the benefit of getting their feedback early. He added that a larger number of parties would make it harder to move forward. Doug declared that he did not want any further impediments. Andrew said that Georges' logic sounded reasonable and withdrew his suggestion.

2. JDK 9 schedule and Jigsaw issues

Andrew started this topic by saying that the JDK 9 schedule and Jigsaw had big impact on Java and the community. He stated that he had run many applications on JDK 9 and all had required significant changes to run. Andrew said that this did not mean that he objected or did not approve; however, given his expectations for JDK 9 adoptions, he thought it would be unfortunate if the GB did not think about the impact or deem it worthy of discussion.

Doug asserted that he too was worried and expected that Oracle worried even more. He wished he had a concrete suggestion of what to do. Andrew continued saying that he expected pushback at adoption. While realizing that such technical issues were not within the GB's scope; he wanted to ask Mark if there was a "Plan B". Mark underscored that this was not a GB issue per se so while a discussion may be interesting, it was not the right forum. He did not want the GB minutes to be yet another place where technical issues and goals were discussed. Andrew confirmed that he was not proposing to discuss technical issues. Mark affirmed that Oracle was keenly aware of the fine balance between moving forward and accommodating all of the past. He stated that there were various options for "Plan B", which he would rather not discuss in this meeting. Andrew thought that seemed like a reasonable answer and he was happy with it. He concluded with a reminder that the JCP would be the final arbiter and he hoped the "right" thing would happen.

Doug noted that the Bylaws did not indicate how transitions across major releases should occur. He reported that there were people who were frustrated that there was no place to commit things that were too late for JDK 9. Mark said that coincidentally, he had a draft of the JDK 10 Project proposal and planned to send it soon. Georges remarked that he had not seen a large-scale project that did not have problems with release transitions. Once work started on the next release, merges with the older release became an issue. He did not want development to entirely stop during JDK 9 stabilization. Doug concurred saying that given the feelings of uncertainty around JDK 9, he did not want any further delays. Mark's commitment to send out the JDK 10 Project proposal addressed his concerns.

Doug and Andrew's comments about the transition from JDK 9 to JDK 10 development led Georges to ask whether they were advocating more frequent major releases as it was something that was being considered. Andrew shared that Red Hat had a hybrid model with Fedora releases every 6 months and enterprise releases about as frequently as the JDK. Doug suggested Ubuntu and their LTS (Long Term Support) releases as another model. Georges said that these examples and others were being evaluated. He did not believe that an existing model could be used directly but there was quite a bit to learn from them. Mark pointed out that the JCP was another concern that would need to be considered. Georges mentioned that a regular year-to-year model had been considered so that every release would not be a "special snowflake".

Moving back to the concrete, Doug observed that requiring an always open repository was within the purview of the GB. Georges suggested proposing a Project so that pushes could occur even if the release was unknown.

3. Any other business

Doug requested status on other miscellaneous processes such as CCC (for compatibility notifications) and JPRT. Georges replied that he had a weekly meeting with the team working on them and expected to see something soon.

At this point, the Board adjourned.