Hi Ondrej,
I believe you're missing Markus' point completely.
It's not that any person could go all the way up to being a committee member without paying one cent.
The point he's trying to make is that the power of the average individual in the community is pretty much nil. This is a matter of power being completely skewed towards the paying members, where they get one seat each just for paying, while thousands of
individuals, together, get a single seat (maybe two, or three at best).
That means that, while I would need to work my *** off, and greatly contribute to the Jakarta EE project for years, and then become recognized enough to win a vote for a single seat in a specific committee, I could just as well gain a single seat in every
single committee by paying a fee.
Yes, it's not as simple as just paying the fees (you need to have a certain amount of employees/members in a group that are dedicated committers), but that actually just widens the breach, as you not only need to pay the fee, you have to sustain a handful
of committers.
I'm not going to ask for a direct democracy, that's just insane. I'm ok with weighted votes. But the disparity in the current weights makes the belief of the general community having any power an utter fallacy.
Yes, we'll have full control over the direction of any sub-project we're directly involved with. That's not a lie.
But you seem to be ignoring the fact those projects cannot be considered part of Jakarta EE, or their processes be considered to follow Jakarta specs, or their inclusion be guaranteed into the umbrella project, without approval from the WGs, where we won't
have any power at all.
Regards,
Mariano Amar