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Executive Committee Meeting Minutes
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PMO |
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Executive Committee |
Total attendance: 21 of 23 voting members |
| Since 75% of the EC's 23 voting members were present, the EC was quorate for this meeting |
We skipped this agenda item since Patrick reported that no changes have been made to the Action Item tracking file since the last meeting.
Heather presented the usual EC stats. Patrick reminded members of the importance of reviewing and voting on the two Java ME JSRs since they are the first ME JSRs in quite some time. Werner Keil asked whether there were any signs of collaboration between JSRs 347 and 107 as he had suggested at the last EC meeting. Patrick responded that he did not know, and suggested that Werner contact the Spec Leads directly, or insert comments to this effect when the JSRs come up for a vote.
(See the PMO presentation for details.)
Patrick reported that the date for the Oracle User Group Summit could not be changed, but said that there was a chance we could "borrow" a room in the Conference Center during the afternoon of the second day of the Summit (Thursday January 23), which would enable us to meet then and all day on Friday. Members agreed that this would be a good option. Patrick promised to check with the Summit organizers and report back, hopefully before the next EC meeting. Patrick also presented a tentative schedule for all of the 2014 meetings. He asked EC members to provide feedback on the suggested dates, noting any clashes with public holidays or significant standards-related events, before the next meeting. (AI October 2013-01 has been opened to track this.)
Scott Jameson suggested that we should determine where the September f2f meeting will be hosted as soon as possible, so that people can make their hotel reservations early (JavaOne makes this very difficult.) Patrick agreed to do so (see AI October 2013-02).
Heather presented a report from the PMO covering the following topics:
Heather listed the JCP events at JavaOne and asked for feedback.
Mike DeNicola suggested that election candidates who are present at JavaOne but who miss the Meet the Candidates session without good reason should be disqualified from the election. Patrick responded that this would require a Process Document change, and that it seemed unnecessarily harsh. He did agree that failure to attend this session (or the corresponding conference call) should be publicized, so that voters can take this into account.
Steve Harris pointed out that the turnout at these sessions has been very low. Steve Winkler suggested that we ask an "exit poll" question during the election - "what influenced your vote?" Patrick responded that the PMO would look into this for next year (see AI October 2013-03).
Susanne Cech suggested that we incorporate an informal "meet the candidates" session into our JavaOne party. We could scroll their names and nomination materials on screen and briefly introduce them to the party attendees in the hope that people would approach them with questions during the party. We agreed to do this next year.
Martijn Verburg commented that the public EC meeting went very well. We agreed that this was probably because we held it after the user-group sessions on Sunday, and at a time when there was no competition from other sessions. It was suggested that we incorporate the Meet the Candidates session into the public EC meeting (extending that meeting if necessary). We agreed to consider this for next year.
Several people commented that the party was excellent. We thanked Heather for organizing it.
We agreed that the Adopt-a-JSR meeting had also been useful despite the low turnout. Patrick thanked Heather for following up with the Australian and Columbian JUG leaders who had come to the session looking for specific information about the program. Both have expressed interest in following up, but they have not yet joined the JCP.
Patrick and Heather reported on the current state of the elections. (See jcp.org for the latest status.) Heather reminded members to call in for the Meet the Candidates call on Thursday. We agreed that after the call the PMO will widely publicize the names of any candidates who did not attend.
Werner Keil asked Nokia what would be the effect of the Microsoft deal on their JCP membership. Siyu Gao responded that the deal has not yet closed and that they are still two separate companies, so he did not expect any immediate changes.
Patrick reviewed the Individuals Working Group portion of the minutes from the September f2f meeting. He suggested that we focus on what appears to be our most contentious issue: what voting privileges should we give to Affiliate members? Heather then reviewed all of the voting options the Working Group had considered (see slide 8 of the presentation) and asked for comments.
Werner Keil asked whether JUGs would get a vote. Heather responded that they probably would, but that this was off-topic for the current discussion.
Susanne Cech suggested - in response to comments made by Gil Tene during the recent f2f meeting - that perhaps we should decouple voting rights from commitments to contribute to Java technologies. Patrick asked her to clarify and after some discussion she suggested that even non-JCP members should be allowed to vote. Bruno Souza responded that the new Affiliate class of membership was the way that we wanted to open up the elections to more people.
Patrick pointed out that we would need some kind of "voter registration" process, and once again asked her to confirm that she was suggesting that anybody who wanted to register should be allowed to vote. She responded "yes". Werner Keil pointed out that such a system would be open to abuse since we would have no way to check the legitimacy of voter registrations. It would be a simple matter to write a script to register multiple times under different email addresses and thereby stuff the ballot. Steve Winkler responded that if we opened the voting process up in this way we would undermine the legitimacy of the elections - the voting process should be designed to prohibit such behavior, or at least to make it difficult.
Steve Harris asked whether Susanne's concern was that the Affiliate membership process was not lightweight enough.
Patrick argued strongly against her suggestion, pointing out that no organization or political entity in the world permits "random people" to vote in their elections. He expressed surprise that more members had not expressed their opposition to this idea.
Mike DeNicola agreed that voting should be limited to Affiliate members. Scott Jameson also agreed, but noted that he supports the goal of making it easier for individual developers to become members.
We then moved on to discuss the possibility of permitting Affiliate members to vote for the Elected seats (option 4 from the list). Patrick noted that there are actually two variants of this option: only affiliates vote for elected seats, and both affiliates and full members vote for elected seats.
Steve Harris argued that Affiliates should be permitted to vote for Elected seats, since the 2-1 majority of ratified to elected seats would ensure stability and maintain Oracle's ultimate control. Michael Wolfe agreed, arguing that it is important to give the wider community more influence.
Steve Harris asked Wayne Beaton how the Eclipse "community seat" members are elected. Could anyone vote? Wayne responded no - only verified members (committers) could vote.
Scott Jameson suggested that we run a straw poll to see which of the eight suggestions have support from EC members. Heather agreed to do so.
We had no time to take up our final topic - the IP Working Group report. Patrick briefly noted that the results of our discussions at the September f2f had been incorporated (but not very well integrated) into version 7 of the IP Flow document. He promised to continue the discussion within the Working Group starting next week.
The meeting then adjourned.
