OpenJDK Governing Board Minutes: 2022/03/10

The OpenJDK Governing Board met via conference call on Thursday, 10 March 2022 at 16:00 UTC with the following agenda:

  1. Offices and conferences in-person
  2. JDK 18
  3. 2022 Governing Board Election
  4. JEP Process
  5. Any other business

Four Board members were present: Georges Saab, Samir Kamerkar, Andrew Haley, 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. Agenda?

Georges welcomed everyone and asked for agenda items. When no topics were volunteered, he offered a few points for discussion. Andrew questioned whether the lack of agenda items in recent meetings was due to the Board doing fantastically well, or to complacency. He said that he had not been lobbied about community issues in some time, and wondered if lack of discussion was a side effect of the great pandemic. Georges agreed that the lack of discussion may be some sort of pandemic-induced remote-meeting fatigue.

1. Offices and conferences in-person

Georges observed that, subject to local laws and policies, Oracle employees now had the option of returning to the office. He mentioned that this seemed to be a trend in the industry. Samir said that IBM was also making this transition.

There was a brief discussion about the format of conferences. Georges noted that there were several conferences scheduled in the coming months including those in Germany, Atlanta, GA (12 - 14 April, in-person), Stockholm (2 - 4 May, hybrid), London (11 - 13 May, in-person), and Barcelona (23 Jul, virtual). Samir reported that he knew several people who would attend the Atlanta conference. Georges thought that the shift towards in-person conferences was a good development.

2. JDK 18

Georges' second topic was JDK 18. He reminded the Board that it would be released very soon. Samir noted that he'd already heard of a project that announced they had built using JDK 19 EA. He was happy to see projects keeping up with recent releases.

3. 2022 Governing Board Election

The next topic was the current election. The following summary of the election was given. We are requesting nominations for the two At-Large Members of the Board. There are currently two nominations, with neither nominee having yet accepted their nomination. If there is a third nominee, we will use the Single Transferable Vote method as in the past two elections. Otherwise, each nominee must be approved by a Simple Majority of the voting Members per the Bylaws. The nomination period ends on Monday, 14 March with the two-week election to follow.

4. JEP Process

Andrew provided a few comments and observations about the JEP Process from his perspective as contributor to Project Loom. He said that he had learned a tremendous amount about the complexity of adding a feature to the JDK. He thought that there were considerable benefits from having help from Oracle engineers in both writing and reviewing JEPs prior to submission. Further, he expected that a feature had a very improved chance of being included in the JDK if Oracle engineers were interested in its success. He thought that some aspects of JEPs appeared mysterious since they were not part of the formal process. While he was not certain that there was a need to reduce friction around JEPs, he wondered whether there was a way to make things more obvious to non-Oracle contributors in order to level the playing field.

Georges noted that the key for successful JEPs was likely in getting help from Oracle engineers who were experienced with JEPs and already understood how much work was required. Georges suggested that "friction" was not the best term and perhaps "thoughtfulness" was more accurate, while Mark favored the term "stewardship". Georges added that there had been significant effort to reduce unnecessary friction but that some consideration was helpful to ensure high-quality incoming features. Georges reminded the Board that the JEP process had been refined over time and further refinements may be merited.

Andrew commented that successful JEPs tend to be written in a particular way and reiterated that being part of a Project largely consisting of Oracle engineers ensured access to resources for timely success. He noted that smaller JEPs such as JEP 358 (Helpful NullPointerExceptions), which were not originated by Oracle, may have a more difficult time gaining the necessary support and momentum to be integrated into the JDK. Mark believed that long-running Projects producing JEPs over time such as Loom or Amber had an advantage of already having an interested audience who had context to evaluate a proposed feature's value.

Andrew expressed a desire to share his observations of the informal, social aspects of successful JEPs, perhaps via some sort of write-up. He strongly advised those interested in contributing new features to work on an existing Project to gain experience. Mark suggested that such a document would be highly valued.

Samir wanted to know whether the pandemic had any impact on participation in the OpenJDK Community as represented by new entries in the Census. Georges noted Census roles were not equal by design. The bar is quite high to become a Reviewer, especially when compared to the requirements to become an Author. He had a general sense that there was an increasing number of Authors and Contributors and an increasing number of active individuals. Georges observed that GitHub recorded various statistics around contributions, with a focus on individuals rather than companies. Mark thought that making sure that work was being done in an effective and efficient manner was a more important than tracking counts of individuals. Andrew had a strong feeling that a tremendous amount of work was being done in his areas of interest. In his experience volume was limited mainly by the number of Reviewers.

In closing, Georges wished Andrew and other candidates the best of luck in the pending election.

At this point, the Board adjourned.