Minutes of JCP.next Working Group Meeting
5 January 2011

Location

Teleconference

Agenda

Meeting logistics
- Choosing a weekly time-slot
- Legal representation
- Oracle representation
- March f2f meeting
Review JSR 306 proposals
Review Wayne Carr proposals
Homework assignments
- More detailed review of JSR 306 and Wayne Carr proposals
- Drafting the JSR submissions
- Creating a definitive wish-list
Plans for January face-to-face meeting

Attendance

The following members attended this meeting of the WG.

Patrick Curran
Heather VanCura
John Rizzo
Don Deutsch
Steve Wolfe
Edin Bektesevic
Scott Jameson
Mike DeNicola
James Warden
Mark Little

Minutes

Weekly meetings

We agreed to try for Wednesdays at 8:00 am as our weekly meeting time. Patrick will poll members to double-check.

Legal representation

We again discussed the issue of legal representation on the Working Group. To recap, from the previous meeting's minutes:

Patrick noted that we will need legal advice for at least some of our work. He had asked Oracle's lawyer to join the group but was told that this wouldn't be possible until permission had been obtained from the lawyers of all other EC members. (This is an ethical issue - an Oracle attorney cannot represent or provide advice to others without the consent of their attorneys.) We discussed possible ways to work around this (perhaps hiring an independent counsel.) We agreed that in practice we will work the business issues and then everyone will pass this off for their own lawyers to review.

We confirmed that JSPA changes will be posponed to the second JSR (to avoid having to ask members to "upgrade" twice) but nevertheless agreed that some legal representation will be required. (Michael Gelblum will attend for Oracle.)

Since asking for multiple legal contacts will be awkward and potentially difficult logistically we wondered whether there might be an alternative (perhaps hiring independent counsel.) Don and Patrick agreed to discuss this further and to report back at next week's EC meeting.

Oracle representation

Don Deutsch attended this meeting in response to the request at the previous meeting that Oracle be represented. He suggested that Eduardo Gutentag, who has great experience in standards organizations (at OASIS and W3C, for example) should join the Working Group. Scott welcomed the suggestion, but said that he would prefer that Eduardo be explicitly named as an alternate Oracle EC member. Don promised to look into this. Scott also said that he hoped Eduardo wouldn't replace Don on the WG, since we need Don's experience and history with previous JCP revisions. Don agreed to attend when he could.

March face-to-face meeting

Patrick reported that the doodle poll showed two possibilities for a meeting in March: Tuesday-Thursday March 8-10 or Tuesday-Thursday March 29-31. Neither was perfect since Mark Little indicated he was unavailable one week and Mike DeNicola is unavailable the other week. Patrick agreed to add Don Deutsch and Eduardo to the poll, and also to ask people to clarify where they would like to meet. (We should also decide whether we want to make this more than a one-day meeting.)

JSR 306 proposals

We briefly reviewed the JSR 306 proposals, noting that the following items are already on our list:

further improve the transparency of the process
further optimize the average duration of JSRs
how can individuals best participate in the process
ability to create liaison relationships with other standards organizations

Patrick asked whether we needed to do further work on "the availability of TCK and associated licensing information upon completion of a JSR," or whether we already had this covered now that licenses must be disclosed up-front. John Rizzo referenced Sean Sheedy's recent email about the "Yes But" votes on the Java SE JSRs, arguing that this was an indication that we still haven't settled the matter. Patrick responded that since full terms are disclosed and EC members are free to vote for or against a JSR further Process Document changes did not seem to be necessary. Don suggested that we need to gain more experience with the current requirements before making further changes. Note: we did add the following item to our wishlist during the last meeting

Clarify the requirement to disclose licenses, particularly if different licenses are available for various types of implementation or different fields of use.

Finally, we discussed the following two items from JSR 306:

allowing non-Java implementations of a JSR's specification
easing the migration of pre--existing technology towards an agreed upon standard

Patrick asked for more background on these items. Members explained that BEA and IBM had been most interested in these matters, wanting to create Java implementations of specifications or technologies that had been implemented outside of the JCP. It was agreed that this was still relevant, and should be explored further.

Heather promised to look into providing access to the jsr-306 mailing list so that earlier work could be retrieved. (UPDATE: the EC meeting archives contain much useful backgroun on these matters, including drafts of the JSPA modified to enable "Hybrid" and "Transplant" JSRs.)

Next steps

Patrick asked members to review the JSR 306 and Wayne Carr proposals before next week's meeting. The goal of that meeting should be to combine the jcp.next presentation, the JSR 306 and Wayne Carr proposals, and the suggestions made during the first Working Group meeting into a single "wish-list." Items on this list would then be prioritized (allocated to either the first or the second JSR,) discussed among the group, and then allocated to a particular member to draft the necessary Process Document or JSPA changes.

Patrick will draft text for the two JSRs (probably not before next week's meeting.)

Minutes of JCP.next Working Group Meeting 5 January 2011