Governing Board Minutes: 2012/9/13

The OpenJDK Governing Board met via conference call on Thursday, 13 September 2012 at 16:00 UTC with the following agenda:

  1. Board membership changes
    • John Duimovich now representing IBM
    • Nominating Ed Lynch (IBM) to Observer
  2. JavaOne
  3. OpenJDK Scorecard
  4. Infrastructure update

Four Board members were present: John Duimovich, Doug Lea, and Mark Reinhold, and Georges Saab.

One Observer, Ed Lynch, joined the call about 30 minutes late.

Donald Smith (Oracle) was a guest presenter.

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. Board membership changes

Mark began the meeting by announcing that Jason Gartner of IBM had moved on to new duties and would no longer serve on the Board. He reported that IBM wished to appoint John Duimovich as their new representative. John was warmly welcomed.

John nominated his colleague Ed Lynch to be an Observer.

AGREED: Ed Lynch is appointed an Observer.

2. JavaOne

Mark reminded Board members that JavaOne will be in a few short weeks, and encouraged them to participate in the Governing Board panel session scheduled for Monday, 1 October at 3:00pm PDT. Georges, Andrew, and John said they’d attend. Doug said that his schedule is very constrained, but he’d try to be there if he can.

Georges reminded everybody that the keynotes will be on Sunday, 30 September, rather than on Monday as in the past. He will deliver part of the Java Strategy Keynote, and Mark will lead the Technical Keynote.

3. OpenJDK Scorecard

Georges reintroduced this topic from previous meetings. The goal is to have something general and persistent enough that it can be used from year to year. It would outline things that we want to do and report on how we well we are doing them. Georges then handed the floor over to Donald Smith, whom he’d asked to coordinate the creation of the score card.

Donald started by saying that the current draft was a result of multiple iterations of discussions with IBM, the London Java Community, and others. In this meeting he wanted to get Board members’ feedback on the structure and content of the score card before proceeding with evaluation.

Each section has a number of goals. For each goal, there is a score (0–5) and notes. The notes section will be used to provide guidance on improving the score. Doug thought that the draft was surprisingly well-constructed. He liked that it enumerated the kinds of things that OpenJDK can do versus things that were outside its scope (e.g., the JCP). John commented that he liked the parts that identified the qualities of a “good” Project. He wanted to know how the score card would evolve over time. For example, the current draft asks if mailing lists are available; in the future, we should ask whether they’re used. Doug was dismayed that there was no mention of bug tracking, but then John pointed out that it was under “Global Infrastructure, Issue Tracker.”

Doug suggested that SurveyMonkey be used to gather broad feedback. Georges asked who would be eligible to fill it out. Doug suggested that OpenJDK Members would be the right set of respondents. John argued for a wider set of people. Doug noted that the survey really consists of two parts, feedback on the score card’s structure and contents, and rating of the goals. Georges asked how the results would be used, and suggested that they be a potential topic for the Governing Board panel session at JavaOne.

AGREED: SurveyMonkey will be used to gather feedback on the goals in the “score card for openness” and to provide ratings. The results will be publicized ahead of JavaOne so that they may be discussed at the JavaOne Governing Board panel session.

4. Infrastructure update

Georges declared that, after resolving various license-procurement issues, the date for migration from the closed Sun legacy bug tracking system to a closed JIRA system was now 26 September. After that, planning to make that system publicly available would begin immediately. In the mean time, the new system would have the same external visibility as the legacy system. Doug wished to go on record stating that he viewed the lack of a public bug system as the single biggest failure of OpenJDK. Georges and Mark assured him that they understand the need to resolve this quickly but that they need to work within the bounds of Oracle processes.

At this point the Board adjourned.