OpenJDK Governing Board Minutes: 2020/10/08

The OpenJDK Governing Board met via conference call on Thursday, 8 October 2020 at 15:00 UTC with the following agenda:

  1. Welcome Samir
  2. Any other business

Five Board members were present: Georges Saab, Samir Kamerkar, Andrew Haley, Christian Thalinger, 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. Welcome Samir

Georges began the meeting by soliciting additional agenda items. When none were given, he offered his welcome and congratulations to Samir, who replaced John Duimovich in IBM's appointed seat on the Board. This sentiment was echoed by other members of the Board. Samir replied that he was excited and honored to be on the Board and said that he'd been a Java developer for almost his entire career. Georges then thanked John Duimovich for his many years of service and said he would send a thank you message to John.

Georges outlined Board meeting policies, saying meetings were held when there were items on the agenda with a minimum of one meeting per quarter. He recognized that sometimes people were reluctant to add to the agenda even when people did have things they wanted to discuss. Some time after the meeting, minutes are reviewed/approved then published.

Samir was encouraged to read the Bylaws. Georges stated that their initial creation was a heavy-weight process and revisions would be similarly challenging. The Bylaws contain a few items which are not strictly adhered to, so they will need to be updated eventually.

Given that the Board is a governing body which does not make technical decisions, Georges believed that not having frequent meetings is a good sign that the Community is functioning well. After Chris raised questions about the communication channels from the Community to the Board, there was a brief discussion. Summarizing, the gb-discuss list is intended to be the primary channel; however, it is not frequently used. It is more common for people to contact individual Board members with concerns. The Board debated the merit of creating and maintaining a Twitter handle but decided against that for several reasons: They believe the current mechanisms are effective, the presence of a handle may imply the need for frequent communication, and the potential for abuse appears to be high. Andrew noted that, in his experience, most things that people lobbied for were not under the purview of the Board. Mark observed that the role of the Board was well-documented in the Bylaws. Chris wondered what percentage of active OpenJDK Community members knew of the Board's existence. Georges thought the Board member's purpose was to serve and that those that were served knew how to contact the Board. When Chris asked who was defined "part of the Community", Georges' definition included people contributing to Projects as Author or above and those who participating in or monitoring OpenJDK mailing lists. Andrew and Mark agreed that they viewed the Community as those who produce Java, not those who use it.

After Georges solicited any advice to Samir, Chris offered that one could talk about anything, including things which could be off record. Georges noted that off-record discussions were not frequent.

2. Any other business

None raised.

At this point, the Board adjourned.