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Executive Committee Meeting Minutes
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PMO |
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Executive Committee |
Total attendance: 22 of 23 voting members |
| Since 75% of the EC's voting members were present, the EC was quorate for this session |
The EC Standing Rules state the following penalties for non-attendance at EC meetings (note that those who participate in face-to-face meetings by phone are officially counted as absent):
There were no changes in voting status as a result of this meeting.
See the PMO presentation for details.
Patrick welcomed the two new EC members: Ivar Grimstad and Tomitribe. He asked them to introduce themselves. Ivar said that he is a Swedish Java developer and that he joined the EC because he wants to be part of and to influence the technologies that he works with regularly. He is a Java Champion, has been a member of several Expert Groups, is primary interest is Java EE, and is beholden to no corporate interests. David Blevins said that he is the CEO and Amelia Eiras is the COO of Tomitribe. David was a cofounder of the Apache TomEE project and is a strong supporter of Java EE and open source. Tomitribe joined the EC because they want to help ensure that Java EE technologies are healthy. They have worked with others on the Microprofile initiative. They want to work for more open TCKs, and to support the JCP because it is the primary reason Java has been successful.
Heather presented the usual EC stats (see the presentation for details).
Heather presented the latest membership report, noting that we have been very successful in recruiting new Associate members (see the PMO presentation for details). Patrick commented that the number of new members is a testament to the success of JSR 364.
Patrick explained that Otavio Santana, who has been a representative for SouJava, is now employed by Tomitribe. He emphasized that he was not accusing anyone of misbehavior, but suggested that this situation could be construed as a conflict of interest, and seems to violate the spirit if not the letter of the Process Document which explicitly prohibits one EC member from having a controlling interest in another. He asked members to comment.
Bruno Souza said that when Otavio joined Tomitribe they had a preliminary discussion within SouJava and originally reached similar conclusions to those Patrick had outlined. On further consideration, however, Bruno argued that there is no similarity with the case of company ownership; SouJava is independent. He pointed out that in the past Geir Magnusson had represented Apache on the EC while employed for a company owned by IBM and later while he was employed by Intel (both these companies having held EC seats at the time and now).
He said that it is not easy to find JUG representatives to get involved in EC work, and that it is quite possible that other similar cases will occur. He noted that SouJava has a well-defined process to decide how they will vote, and that this process produces results that are independent of the wishes and opinions of any individual member. He explained that SouJava is a legal entity and that Otavio is a board member.
Patrick responded that this suggested the possibility of a couple of more focused restrictions we might want to impose. We could define restrictions that apply only to JUGs that are not legal entities, or perhaps exempt those who are legal officers of a JUG from any restrictions. Vladimir Zakharov responded that he did not see that such an exemption made sense; if someone has legal obligations to two different entities this seems like a clear conflict of interest.
Ben Evans pointed out that employment law in Europe is very different from the US, with European employees being much less obligated to their employers than US employees. Bruno responded that the situation in Brazil is similar - employees are free to engage in outside activities without obligation. Chris Dennis argued that independently of the legal circumstances we appear to have a situation where someone seems to have two votes. Perception is what matters.
Bruno noted that it is very much in SouJava's interests that they are not seen as influenced by Tomitribe.
David Blevins said that he has been involved with Apache for years. He confirmed that Geir Magnusson had represented Apache while employed by IBM and Intel. He noted that all Apache statements to the JCP were confirmed by the Board, suggesting that if a JUG has a clear and transparent governance model then the possibility of a conflict is much reduced.
Patrick responded that we should not necessarily argue that what happened in the past justifies similar actions today.
Mike DeNicola said that since Otavio has not been designated a Tomitribe representative he therefore only represents SouJava and there is no conflict.
Patrick responded that since we were running short of time we should pick up this discussion again at the January face-to-face meeting.
Don Deutsch addressed the question of Oracle funding for EC members representing non-profits to attend EC meetings (Patrick had earlier said that the matter came to notice when SouJava applied for funding for Otavio to attend the January meeting in London). He said that under no circumstances would Oracle pay for an employee of an EC member-company to attend a meeting, noting that at times in the past budgets had been tight enough that he had considered telling some EC members that he could not fund their travel. Ben Evans asked Don whether this meant that he was suggesting crowd-funding to raise money to bring members to EC meetings. Don reiterated that Oracle funding is not a right.
Bruno responded that he fully understood Oracle's position. He noted, however, that it now seemed that the only way they could arrange for Otavio to attend an EC meeting would be if Tomitribe paid his expenses. He argued that this would reduce SouJava's independence and increase the conflict of interest.
Patrick said that he had hoped to be able to provide an update on Java EE, and that Oracle had hoped to release information today. However, they had to postpone release due to Oracle's "Quiet Period" prior to the quarterly earnings statement. He said that he hoped the news could be released soon.
David Blevins provided a brief update on the Microprofile.io initiative. He explained that the work is being moved to the Eclipse Foundation where it will be Apache-licensed. 3000 people have responded to their survey and they have about 600 members. Microprofile.io 1.0 has been released and 1.1 is in progress. They are still interested in filing JSRs. Ben Evans added that the London Java Community expects to lead several hackdays soon to introduce the developer comminity to the new software.
Patrick suggested that this topic too be continued at the January meeting.
We ran out of time to address this topic. Patrick promised to follow up via email.
The meeting then adjourned in order to reconvene for the Public EC meeting.
January 10-11 2017, face-to-face meeting in London hosted by Goldman Sachs.
