OpenJDK Governing Board Minutes: 2024/08/29

The OpenJDK Governing Board met via conference call on Thursday, 29 August 2024 at 15:00 UTC with the following agenda:

OpenJDK Member renewal/expiration
Bylaws
OpenJDK Committers' Workshop
Any other business

Five Board members were present: Georges Saab, Annette Keenleyside, Andrew Haley, Phil Race, 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. OpenJDK Member renewal/expiration

Georges began the meeting by confirming it was quorate and thanked everyone for attending. He then invited attendees to suggest additional agenda items. After no additional topics were suggested, Georges turned the floor to Mark.

Mark explained that OpenJDK Members are individuals with long-standing involvement in the Community, likely serving as Project Reviewers. In recognition of their contributions, these people have been given additional privileges, notably voting rights for new Project creation and in the annual Governing Board Election. The Bylaws require members to request annual renewal to prevent automatic expiration, effectively serving as a "heartbeat" test. However, automatic expiration was never enforced and was the subject of the Board meeting on May 2019. At that time, the Board recommended that a vote in the annual Governing Board election could be interpreted as a renewal request if the Bylaws permitted. When Phil and Andrew pointed out that this was one of several Bylaw provisions that were not enforced, Mark stated that the Bylaws writers did their best in 2011.

Georges redirected the conversation by asking if the Board wished to consider implementing that decision now, using a vote in the 2025 Governing Board Election as a request for member renewal, with expiration following for all non-voters. He inquired if the Board saw a problem with having a growing number of OpenJDK Members who were not active. Annette asked what problem needed to be solved. Mark replied he did not see an issue other than fulfilling the spirit of the Bylaws. Andrew generally thought that auto-expiring people would be unfriendly. Phil thought that basing continued membership on engagement with an event lasting only two weeks of the year was inadvisable, advocated for either a vote during the election or a separate request. Mark responded that the Bylaws allowed for the interpretation of a vote in the election to be considered a renewal request. Phil observed that there were just under 200 voting members, of which 100 voted in the 2024 Governing Board election. Mark added that approximately 20 to 25 Members had invalid addresses. Phil noted that 50% voter participation was better than Project voting for Committer and Reviewers.

Georges concluded the agenda item by saying that while there was a good and vibrant discussion on this topic, he did not believe there was sufficient interest to bring this to vote. Automatic expiration will not be implemented.

2. Bylaws

Andrew started by saying that the Bylaws were the best we could have achieved at the time, considering the circumstances, and he believed they were done remarkably well. However, he noted that a few things that could be improved. Andrew cited several examples, including the distinction between the Participant and Contributor roles, as OpenJDK does not accept contributions without an OCA. Also, he thought being a Group Member seemed useless, as being a member provided no traction within the Community. Although Andrew did not wish for a Pandora's box of unfulfilling work, he felt it was important to raise these issues.

Mark acknowledged that the Bylaws do not reflect how the OpenJDK Community operates today. He suggested there may be no need for separate Projects with distinct groups of Committers. Mark pointed out that the division between Groups and Projects is a concept borrowed from other communities that is not particularly useful in the context of OpenJDK. The "Contributor" role is now about the OpenJDK Contributor Agreement (OCA). The "Participant" role identified everybody who engages in the Community, even on mailing lists, who did not yet possess any rights or privileges.

Georges asked Andrew whether the divergence from the Bylaws was significant enough to merit opening Pandora's box. Andrew believed that a neophyte reading the Bylaws would not understand their relevance to the operation of OpenJDK. His main goal with this topic was to gauge the Board's interest in discussing it. Phil responded by emphasizing the importance of actual pain points; if these pain points become significant, revisions should be made. Currently, the pain is minimal. Georges inquired whether the areas where practice diverges from the letter of the Bylaws are becoming more severe or contained within the set of things that have never been done. Mark thought they were minor and suggested adding a note to the top of the Bylaws referring the reader to the Developers' Guide, a living document reflecting current practices. The Board briefly speculated on why individuals might read the Bylaws.

Georges closed this topic stating that the inconsistencies between the Bylaws and OpenJDK Community practice were discussed and considered. The Board agreed that no immediate action is necessary.

AGREED: There is no need to resolve inconsistencies between the Bylaws and OpenJDK Community practice at this time.

3. OpenJDK Committers' Workshop

Phil mentioned that he had attended many OpenJDK Committers' Workshops (OCW) before and after the pandemic, and almost all of them felt useful and valuable. There were many worthwhile topics to discuss. Unfortunately, the workshop held in August 2024 in Santa Clara was a disappointment. During the initial topic selection, he felt that many topics were too niche, and did get the impression that everybody was not interested enough to vote. The event was scheduled for 1.5 days; he felt it could have been completed in just one day. Mark agreed with Phil's general assessment and added that, while there were a decent number of topics, most appeared to appeal to small sets of individuals. There was a brief comparison of logistics between the European and Santa Clara events in 2024, covering aspects such as room capacity, proximity to other conferences, and attendees' travel distance. Andrew noted that funding may have forced some individuals to choose only to attend the JVM Language Summit. Phil thought that the unconference format made things difficult to predict, but he suggested that the OCW should be reduced to a single day, or a least have a portion of the conference that is more structured. Andrew proposed explicitly inviting people to give presentation on topics of general interest. Mark reminded Andrew that topics were solicited in the past, but there were never many takers. Phil and Georges recommended discussing potential format revisions after the OCW in Brussels in February 2025.

At this point, the Board adjourned.