Minutes of Public Executive Committee Meeting
for June 14 2016
version 0.1: June 14 2016
Date
June 14 2016
Location
Teleconference
Agenda
JSR 364 is now live. During this meeting we will discuss the changes that it has introduced and explain the new categories of membership that are already enabling and encouraging broader participation in the JCP.
Heather Vancura explained the changes introduced by JSR 364 (see the presentation for details).
Reza Rahman congratulated Heather for leading this important JSR. He said that he personally planned to renew his membership as an Associate, and that the Philadelphia JUG also intends to join. He encouraged other individual developers to join as Associates.
The future of Java EE
Reza Rahman (ex Oracle employee) introduced the topic of the future of Java EE (many developers joined the call in order to discuss this topic). He said that the May Executive Committee (EC) meeting minutes, in which EC members expressed their concerns about the state of Java EE, have been noted by many people. He said that he appreciates EC members having made a public statement. He noted that for months now there has been very little activity on Java EE JSRs and wondered what the implications of this might be for relevance of the JCP itself, since Java EE JSRs had typically constituted the majority of JSRs.
Reza said that he had formed the Java EE Guardians to raise awareness of the problem; they want to move Java EE forward with Oracle's help. The group has support from many Java User Groups and Java Champions as well as from James Gosling. They recently launched a change.org petition and already have more than 800 supporters. He said he hoped that the Executive Committee would continue to work on this matter, and he hoped that Oracle will engage with the community in a constructive manner.
Werner Keil (individual EC member) said that only one of the Java EE JSRs (JSON-B) appears to be active, and pointed out that unless something changes all of the others will be subject to JSR Renewal Ballots in October and November this year.
Patrick Curran (JCP Chair) reviewed the JCP's Process Document to explain how the JSR Renewal Ballot process works, noting that the EC can vote to shut down JSRs that appear to be making no progress. He explained that while in theory JSRs that have been shut down could be taken over by someone else, in practice this would be virtually impossible unless the original Spec Lead was willing to transfer Intellectual Property rights in the Spec, RI, and TCK to the new Spec Lead.
Ryan Cooper asked about plans to replace java.net - what will happen to the content posted there? Heather Vancura (PMO) responded that Spec Leads are responsible for migrating their content to another platform such as the Oracle Community or GitHub. No decisions have yet been made, but the problem is being investigated. She noted that java.net will remain online for about another year.
Ryan asked whether content for dormant JSRs will be lost. Reza asked specifically about the Java EE 8 JSRs, pointing out that we do not want to lose that content. He said that the community is willing to help with a migration. Patrick suggested that if the Spec Lead is not willing to migrate the content then it could indeed be lost. He pointed out that the content from java.net projects will be made available to the project-owners in the form of tar files. He asked whether the tar files for "abandoned" projects would be made available to the public so that volunteers could archive the content elsewhere. He pointed out the there are several years of JCP history on java.net and suggested that the PMO should do everything possible to preserve this.
Reza then asked EC members what the EE Guardians could do that they are not already doing. Martijn Verburg (EC member representing the London Java Community) responded that some of the larger Java EE vendors are looking into helping with ongoing platform development (this is not something that individual developers will typically be able to do). He suggested that an announcement might be forthcoming from vendors in a month or so, and that this might involve an alternative open-source forum.
Chris Dennis (EC member representing Software AG) pointed out that "Oracle holds all the cards" and that it is important to make the case that it is in Oracle's best interest that Java EE survives.
Martijn suggested that people should encourage Oracle partners and customers to press the case to Oracle.
Reza thanked the JCP for providing this public forum and the meeting then adjourned.
