Re: [jakarta.ee-spec.committee] minimum review period for IP lock in

[Wayne Beaton <wayne.beaton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Eclipse Development Process leaves only one week of formal review for an official release. Theoretically, it is during this time that a member company could object to the release that, for example, they believe infringes on their intellectual property. This has never actually happened in my tenure.

One week is far too short a period of time to engage in any sort of comprehensive review. But this works because it's all done in open source. Any individual or member who feels that there is some show-stopper issue with a project may interject at any time. Eclipse open source projects are required to operate in an open and transparent manner so all committers have equal power. Further, any sort of last minute dump of content would invoke the IP Due Diligence process, which mitigates the risk of that happening. Frankly, if a member company cares about the activity of a particular open source project, they can jump in and join the conversation at any point.

In short, if you're complaining during the review, you've waited too long.

I will point out that I have mitigated shenanigans in the implementation of "open" in the past. In the case where a project is not operating in a vendor neutral manner, or is otherwise skewing the level playing field, it should be brought to the project leadership chain and escalated as high as necessary.

An interested organization can literally engage with the project for as long a period as they'd like. Any company that risks lock-in of their intellectual property has committers on the actual project. That is, they would have already committed resources to that project that have equal power to effect change and generally keep an eye on the state of things for their corporate masters.

FWIW, I completely understand that there is a difference between reviewing locked-down content and reviewing a moving target while a project team works.

Wayne

On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 9:39 AM Steve Millidge (Payara) <steve.millidge@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have no opinion from a legal perspexctive but I would err on the side of speed.

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: jakarta.ee-spec.committee-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx <jakarta.ee-spec.committee-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Mike Milinkovich
Sent: 06 March 2019 14:43
To: jakarta.ee-spec.committee@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [jakarta.ee-spec.committee] minimum review period for IP lock in


I would like to hear from other companies involved here as to whether they agree that 30 days is the minimal acceptable number. Both in general, and for Jakarta EE.

On 2019-03-05 4:03 p.m., Bill Shannon wrote:
> We've talked previously about the minimum review period for reviews
> that lock in IP contributions, and the need to have adequate time for
> legal to review such specifications.
>
> I had a conversation with Oracle legal today and we talked about this
> issue.  It is Oracle's position that the minimum review period must be
> no less than 30 days.  Oracle will not participate in a specification
> process where the review period that locks in IP contributions is less
> than 30 days.
>
> Ideally the EFSP would specify 30 days as a minimum, to ensure that
> Oracle could participate in all Eclipse specification processes
> derived from the EFSP, but at the very least the JESP needs to specify this minimum.
>
> It would be interesting to hear what other corporations consider an
> adequate review period.
>
> Separately, Oracle is having discussions with the Eclipse IP advisory
> committee about how exactly this IP lock in occurs, and how exactly
> one could choose to withdraw from a group to avoid IP lock in.  We
> expect this issue to be resolved at an Eclipse board meeting in the
> next month or two.


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Wayne Beaton

Director of Open Source Projects | Eclipse Foundation, Inc.