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.