Open Letter for JCP Reform

The votes are in, and the people have spoken. They are mad as hell and they want change. No, not those elections—I am talking about the JCP elections. There are two categories of seats for each “executive committee” (SE, EE, and ME). “Ratified” seats are picked by Oracle and need to be ratified by the JCP members with a simple majority. Anyone can be nominated for open seats, and the top vote getters are elected. Don't blame Oracle for this dual system. It was invented by Sun, presumably to ensure that some (most?) faces at the table will be friendly ones. Sun, to my recollection, never abused their privilege, and nominated organizations (and occasionally people) with credibility in the community. Oracle had a bad start, however. Their nominations were Apache, Red Hat and Hologic. Ho-who? That's what Stephen Colebourne and others asked. Apparently, their major claim to fame is that they are a customer of the Java-based Oracle E-Business Suite product. In the end, it didn't work. Hologic wasn't elected (33% for, 42% against, 25% abstentions). And Oracle looked (evil|clueless) trying to defend their choice with disingenuous statements. In the dull world of the JCP, that was pretty exciting. Also, interestingly, the top vote getter for the SE open seat was Google. Yes, the same Google that is being sued for using a bastardized version of SE in Android. By the way, did you know that yo...

Date: November, 04 2010
Url: http://www.java.net/blog/cayhorstmann/archive/2010/11/04/open-letter-jcp-reform

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