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Executive Committee Meeting Minutes
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Tuesday January 13 |
Wednesday january 14 |
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PMO |
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ME EC |
SE/EE EC |
Total attendance: 12 |
Total attendance: 15 |
| Since 75% of each EC were present, there was a quorum for this meeting on January 13 | |
PMO |
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ME EC |
SE/EE EC |
Total attendance: 12 |
Total attendance: 12 |
| Since 75% of each EC were present, there was a quorum for this meeting on January 14 | |
The ECs reviewed the new structure of the public minutes page on jcp.org. After some discussion of the December minutes the ECs decided that they needed more time to review them. It was agreed that the minutes would be re-circulated by email, and that they would be considered approved unless susbstantive comments were received within a week. Any such comments would be resolved via email
(For the record, the minutes were later approved.)
Heather delivered the EC stats presentation.
SE/EE: Adam Boyle replaced Bryn Rahm as Primary Rep for Nortel.
ME: Intel resigned their seat.
Patrick reported that Sun is very aware of the situation and that steps are being taken to resolve it. He expects to be able to provide more information soon.
The ECs then went into private session to discuss the status of the Sun-Apache negotations. During this session members had a lively discussion, and made some proposals that will be brought to the attention of Sun's management.
Greg Czajkowski was unable to attend the meeting to present on JSR 284 (this presentation will be rescheduled for a future meeting). Josh Bloch reported that the process of finalizing this JSR (dealing with export control and licensing issues) was extremely difficult, even for a large company like Google. He requested the PMO to provide guidelines for Spec Leads - perhaps with boilerplate text.
Patrick asked Josh to send email with more details, and promised that the PMO would help.
Heather delivered the year in review presentation.
Sean ponted out that the membership numbers presumably include individuals who are no longer active and asked how we can tell which members are active and which are not. He suggested that voting in the elections would be a good criterion. Patrick responded that when the new collaboration tools are rolled out this would provide another measure of membership activity (participation in forums and Wikis).
Wayne asked for a list of inactive JSRs. Heather promised to provide one.
Doug Lea pointed out that he participates in several EGs but that the presentation states that he serves only on one. Heather promised to follow up on this. Heather also agreed to work with Don Deutsch on how to classify the JSRs that were previously led by BEA. (It might not be correct to consider all of these as now led by Oracle.)
Patrick pointed out that Expert Groups should publish their final materials within a reasonable time of JSR approval (the report showed that sometimes the delay can be nine months). He suggested that EC members should not approve JSRs if the Spec Lead cannot commit to releasing the materials within 3 months, and also suggested that perhaps approval should time-out after a certain period if the materials have not been published.
Patrick delivered a presentation on his recent trip to Asia. He reported that the PMO would investigate ways to enable members in Asia, particularly those who are not comfortable speaking English, to participate more in the work of the organization.
Sean Sheedy led a discussion about the state of the ME ecosystem (presentation) based on feedback he has received from developers. He said that people are concerned that Java ME is more focused on feature phones, and
that other platforms (Symbian, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone)
are taking the lead on smartphones.
He reported that developers' top three concerns are:
He pointed out that there are more than 1000 Java ME phone models and that the iPhone and Android have a lower barrier to entry for developers. The newer open-source based platforms offer more opportunities for developers to participate, and they do so enthusiastically. (The Android mailing list gets 300 messages a day, whereas the java.net list for Java ME is relatively quiet.)
Members discussed whether ECs are chartered to act as a steward for the platform (the Process Document doesn't explicitly state that this is one of the roles of the EC.) Sean argued that the EC should take the lead. Patrick said that he saw no reason why we shouldn't have Expert Groups (Working Groups) that tackle issues or problems, producing whitepapers or plans for action rather than simply working on JSRs.
Members discussed the lack of a real platform JSR (MSA is simply an umbrella JSR that's unable to significantly change the component JSRs).
Returning to the question of what developers are looking for, Sean said that they want to write one application and have it run everywhere. He argued that the JCP is focused on APIs, and to remain competitive with these newer platforms it needs to enlarge its scope to address issues in other parts of the mobile application ecosystem, such as improving interoperability and unifying disparate developer onboarding and application distribution processes.
Cuihtlauac Alvarado pointed out that Java ME is still based on Java SE 1.3. Danny suggested that harmonizing Java ME and SE so that ME became a real subset of SE, should help. Cuihtlauac pointed out that Sun owns the base platforms (CDC and CLDC) and that they haven't taken the lead.
Sean asked the corporate members of the ME EC whether they are still committed to Java. Orange, Nokia, Ericsson, and RIM all responded positively.
Sean asked again whether the ME EC should be taking more of a lead to address the concerns raised by developers, and asked whether it was necessary to change the way we do business. Jens Jensen said that the proposals he would make tomorrow on Governance would make some recommendations in this area.
Kimmo pointed out that some of the issues Sean raised are being addressed
by MSA, while others fall outside of the JCP charter (eg, discussions of the
need for an AppStore). Technical standards provide the foundation on which
commercial companies can set up such an implementation but business areas fall
outside the charter.
Sean asked whether the EC should be doing more on
the technical side and whether it should extend its charter
into business areas.
Cuihtlauac said that he didn't think it would be appropriate for the JCP
to extend into business areas. He did argue for more technical leadership, for
example suggesting APIs that should
be developed.
Patrick encourage the EC to take a lead, to issue guidelines, and to point
out where there are missing JSRs, encouraging people to take them on. He suggested
that the Process Document be amended to make it clear that this kind of activity
is in scope for the EC.
Sean asked whether there is consensus that the platform is valuable, that we want to do more in areas that are currently within our charter, and that we're willing to consider expanding our charter. He encouraged the EC to make a public commitment to address these issues by forming a committee to focus on technical issues and to address areas that are outside the current purvue of the EC.
The ECs agreed to return to this discussion after the MSA presentation.
Kay Glahn presented a report on JSR 249: MSA2 (presentation). He said that this JSR is the most significant attempt to address fragmentation in many years. The Expert Group is operating in a transparent manner (with an observer alias, a discussion forum, and other kinds of outreach) but that even though they are now in Public Review they've received very few comments.
Members briefly continued the ME ecosystem discussion, addressing the need for a long-term roadmap, the need for more interoperability testing to address fragmentation, and the need to improve the TCK development process.
Members agreed to continue the discussion the following day, and then adjourned.
Members thanked the PMO for organizing the JCP party at the Computer History Museum. A good time was had by all.
ME EC members made the following commitments for the record:
1) ME EC Reps are committed to the Java ME Platform. They want it to evolve
and to succeed, and they believe that this is possible.
2) ME EC Reps want to take action within the current charter to help to
evolve the platform and to help solve the ecosystem issues.
3) ME EC Reps want to clarify and to extend the charter to make it clear that
they can and should provide the kind of leadership that
many people expect.
Patrick suggested that a suitable next step would be for the ME EC to meet
and to discuss these items in more detail, working out positive steps that
can be taken to address them. He suggested an out-of-cycle meeting specifically
dedicated to ME issues. SE members would be free to attend, but not required
to do so. He promised to work with Sean and Kay on an agenda, and to schedule
a meeting to take place shortly after the Mobile World Congress meeting in
Barcelona.
After further discussion on the ECs' charter, it was agreed that work could begin immediately, but that there would be some value to a small revision of the charter to make it explicit that it is approprate for the EC to address these broader issues.
Patrick addressed the need to fill Intel's vacated seat on the ME EC. He reported that the Process Document requires us to hold a special election (since this resignation ocurred more than three months from the next regularly-scheduled election.) However, the cost of having Price Waterhouse Coopers run the election would be prohibitive. He suggested that we have three alternatives:
After some discussion members agreed that the second option was the only appropriate one (following the required Process). It was pointed out that if only one candidate nominated themselves then there would be no need to actually hold the election - that candidate would simply be declared the winner.
Doug Lea and Sean Sheedy volunteered to act as the "audining comittee".
The PMO committed to start the election process within a couple of weeks.
Jens Jenssen delivers a presentation on governance reform.
After a lengthy discussion members agreed that there is no need to form a separate architecture group. Rather, the existing ECs are empowered to address architectural and roadmap issues, and they should do so.Where necessary they can form working groups, and can call on technical experts. There was agreement that those who do guide the direction of the platforms need to do so in a more transparent manner. Members also agreed that the ECs should reach out more to the membership and the developer community, seeking feedback and input from them. EC members also agreed that there is great value in direct discussions with Spec Leads, not only after the work of the EG is completed, but also during the development of the JSR.
Patrick and Heather led a discussion on the proposed Maintenance Release for JSR 215 (see slides 17 and 18 of the PMO Topics presentation).
Members agreed to form a core Working Group (WG) that would meet regularly and that would report back to the full EC. All EC members would be free to attend the WG meetings if they wished. Several members volunteered for the WG. Heather promised to issue a formal call for volunteers, and to run the meetings. The EC agreed that planning for two releases - the first to address "low hanging fruit" and the second to address more substantive changes.
Members discussed the reform items listed in the presentation, and added the following suggestions:
The EC briefly discussed alternates for current Individual EC members and found no issue with this. Sean Sheedy said that he believed that C. Enrique Ortiz would likely be his alternate.
The ECs agreed that the Working Group should meet at least once before the next EC meeting. Heather promised to set this up.
EC members confirmed the locations and dates for 2009 face-to-face meetings in Hursley UK in May (hosted by IBM) and in Princeton New Jersey in September (hosted by Siemens). See the JCP calendar for details.
