On 2019-01-03 7:05 a.m., Richard
Monson-Haefel wrote:
MP,
on the other hand, is new and has been running as an agile process
since its beginning. Why change that? My question is: Why is it
so essential that MP adhere to the EFSP? Why is that required?
The only one that can answer that, as far as I know, is Mike
Mlinkovich who I've CCed on this email.
Indeed.
Eclipse MicroProfile has been enormously successful. From its
start in late 2016 it has quickly evolved to a well-recognized set
of industry specifications with numerous independent commercial
implementations. The roots of this success come from its agility.
Rapid iteration of the specifications developed under a low
ceremony process has pushed MicroProfile forward at a great pace.
But there is no disputing that MicroProfile is a specification,
meant to be implemented by others. It is not a single open source
project like Spring.
However, the very success of MicroProfile means that legal issues
become a greater concern. In particular, the status quo could
potentially expose the Eclipse Foundation, its members, and
implementers of the MicroProfile specifications to unnecessary
risk. There are no legal problems with MicroProfile that we know
of at this time, so now is the perfect time to take steps to
mitigate the risk of such problems arising in the future. Without
getting into too much detail, the legal risks from the current
situation could arise from things like: no formal participation or
membership model, no licensing of patents from contributors to
independent implementations, and no formal compatibility model.
The low ceremony process also increases the risk that
royalty-bearing IP could be inserted into specifications, exposing
the entire MicroProfile ecosystem to IP litigation.
The reason why formal specification processes exist is because
there could be real legal liabilities associated with
specifications. The formality of specification processes have
evolved to mitigate those risks.
In addition, since the MicroProfile specification process was
established, the Eclipse Foundation has created an Eclipse
Foundation Specification Process. So we now have specification
projects hosted at the Eclipse Foundation which do not conform to
our specification process. To be clear, MicroProfile is not the
only group that we are having this conversation with. For example,
the Eclipse
Tahu project is the home of the Sparkplug specification. We
are working with them to establish a working group which will
utilize the EFSP.
For the reasons above, we are stating that the MicroProfile
project has risk mitigation issues that must be addressed. There
are many potential solutions to these issues, and we look forward
to working with the MicroProfile community to come to a solution
that best meets the needs of the community, the implementers of
the MicroProfile specifications, the MicroProfile ecosystem, and
the Eclipse Foundation.
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