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Re: [ee4j-pmc] PMC Minutes

On 2018-05-19 3:07 AM, Markus KARG wrote:
you describe how the EF did it *in the past*. As a new EF member I try to push the EF into a more open future. AFAIK the EF never had such a big addition of projects, committers and members so far and there has to be a discussion whether the *previously* used archetype is still suitable in these ages, for EE4J and the EF's future in general. It must be allowed to "refurbish" the EF a bit, to turn away from the top-down vendors-only club to a bottom-up committer-controlled democratic entity. Whether this happens or not will the members decide. So this is not about me not understanding what the EF is like, but it is about the EF understanding that the new members having a different vision about the EF being like in future.

Markus,

I admire your values, and I appreciate your philosophy. But....

The Eclipse Foundation has over 350 projects, approximately 35 of them are new projects related to Jakarta EE. By comparison, the Eclipse IoT group has 36 and has more members and a comparable number of committers. The Modeling and Tools communities are even larger. The point being that Jakarta EE represents significant and sudden growth, but it is not unprecedented in scale. I would also point out that the governance models and processes that exist at the Eclipse Foundation are a very large part of why Jakarta EE came to us in the first place. We were selected after a careful evaluation of the alternatives.

I categorically reject the idea that the Eclipse Foundation is a "...top-down vendors-only club...". The governance structures are designed to ensure that many stakeholders have a role, and the committers absolutely do. I firmly believe that a wide diversity of roles and viewpoints make for better governance. Our governance models may not be what you're used to, but they have stood the test of time.

Your definition of open source says that the committers are the only stakeholders who may be involved in the governance of each individual project, and you define a democracy by restricting the votes to a single class of citizen. Reasonable people can disagree with that viewpoint while remaining passionate supporters and practitioners of open source.

The Eclipse Foundation staff, the Jakarta EE Working Group, and the EE4J PMC all must follow policies which are set by the Eclipse Foundation Board of Directors. I would recommend that you consider running in the next Board election, because that is the place to affect the changes that you desire. This mailing list is certainly not that place.

We do realize that with Jakarta EE we are welcoming a lot of people such as yourself who have earned their open source experience elsewhere. Jakarta EE is really just getting started, and I think its fair to say that you haven't actually experienced our approach fully. Creating a brand new specification process in parallel is definitely an added level of complexity. Give it some time with an open mind and let's see how we're all doing at the end of this year.

--
Mike Milinkovich
mike.milinkovich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(m) +1.613.220.3223


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