OpenJDK Governance

On Friday, Mark Reinhold, mentioned that I have recently spent some time helping to help flesh out a draft governance model for the OpenJDK community. As John Duimovich described it, our goal is for OpenJDK to be “…an open, transparent, and meritocratic project that can be run in a lightweight and efficient manner”. I think we’ve largely succeeded in getting there. But it is important to recognize that when the document is (soon!) made public that it is a draft. I expect that many people will have comments and feedback, and I look forward to hearing them.

I do not have a prior history of involvement with the OpenJDK community, so being asked to contribute to this process was both an honour and a pleasant surprise. But given that Eclipse is also a community which involves participants ranging from individuals to some of the world’s largest corporations I believe we have some experiences which are helpful and relevant to the governance of OpenJDK. I hope that I’ve made some useful contributions which help the OpenJDK community off to a great (re)start.