Eclipse Foundation Board Meeting Minutes
September 19, 2012
A Meeting of the Board of Directors (the “Board”) of Eclipse.org Foundation, Inc., a Delaware corporation (the “Corporation”), was held on held at 11:00 am Eastern time on September 19, 2012 as a regularly scheduled teleconference.
Present on the teleconference were the following Directors:
|
Present |
Director |
Organization |
|
No |
Chris Aniszczyk |
Elected Committer Representative |
|
Yes |
John Arthorne |
Elected Committer Representative |
|
Yes |
Jutta Bindewald |
SAP AG |
|
Yes |
Cedric Carbone |
Talend |
|
Yes |
Eric Clayberg |
Elected Sustaining Representative |
|
Yes |
Paul Clenahan |
Actuate Corporation |
|
Yes |
Etienne Juliot |
OBEO |
|
No |
Hans Kamutzki |
Elected Sustaining Representative |
|
Yes |
Pat Huff |
IBM |
|
Yes |
Mik Kersten |
Elected Sustaining Representative |
|
Yes |
Jochen Krause |
Innoopract GmbH |
|
Yes |
Dennis Leung |
Oracle |
|
No |
Paul Lipton |
CA Technologies |
|
Yes |
Achim Loerke |
BREDEX GmbH |
|
Yes |
Ed Merks |
Elected Committer Representative |
|
Yes |
Wolfgang Neuhaus |
itemis AG |
Present at the invitation of the Board was Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director, Chris Larocque, Treasurer, and Janet Campbell, Secretary, of Eclipse.org Foundation, Inc.
General Business:
Mike Milinkovich introduced the full and abridged minutes for the Board meetings of June 19, 2012, a copy of which is attached hereto as Exhibit B. The Board passed the following resolution unanimously:
RESOLVED, the minutes and abridged minutes for the Board meeting of June 19, 2012 are approved.
Mike Milinkovich indicated to the Board that the Test and Performance Tools Platform Top Level Charter needed to be revoked. In late 2010, the Test and Performance Tools Platform (TPTP) PMC decided to terminate and archive the top-level project and all subprojects following the Helios SR-2 release in February 2011. At that time, another party (verit) stepped forward to take over the project, the termination was withdrawn, and the project membership (including PMC) was replaced. In the time since, the subprojects under the TPTP top-level project have continued to operate as regular Eclipse projects, but TPTP itself is no longer operating as a viable top-level project.
The EMO will collapse the existing TPTP subprojects into a single project, move it to the Tools top-level project, and requests that the board revoke the TPTP project's charter.
Mike Milinkovich asked if there were any questions or comments associated with moving forward with that action. There being no comments or questions, the Board passed the following resolution unanimously:
RESOLVED, the Test and Performance Tools Platform (TPTP) Project's charter is revoked.
Mike Milinkovich introduced a discussion of the Polarsys and LocationTech Top Level Project (TLP) Charters attached hereto as Exhibit C and D respectively. Mike indicated that both were required to tie the project activities of those Industry Working Groups to the Eclipse Development Process and Eclipse IP Process. John Arthorne asked if the Polarsys Project would use LGPL code, and whether that was something that Eclipse had done before. Mike indicated that yes that was the case, but that that portion of the initiative had been approved in a previous Board meeting. Mike added that the Board had already approved both of the IWGs in question and that in both cases the IWGs had licensing flexibility approved by the Board.
Mike noted that in both cases the new top-level projects would also be on separate forges, and governed by both the Eclipse Development Process and the Eclipse IP Process. As soon as the LocationTech TLP was approved there will be a proposal to move uDig to Eclipse but that cannot occur until the LocationTech PMC is ready to go. Jochen Krause asked how people would find these projects on the eclipse.org website. Mike responded that was not yet decided, but that at the moment he was leaning towards not having them listed as an Eclipse project, because they would be operating under a separate forge.
The Board passed the following resolutions unanimously:
RESOLVED, the Polarsys Top Level Project Charter is approved.
RESOLVED, the LocationTech Top Level Project Charter is approved.
Java TCK Agreement Vote Results:
Mike Milinkovich introduced a discussion of the results of the electronic vote on approving the Java TCK Agreement with Oracle. Mike confirmed that the vote did not pass.
Mike added that if a Strategic Member requested a TCK, a second vote would be called.
Dennis Leung as for a clarification on the voting process, indicating that he thought only a majority of those that voted would be required. Mike Milinkovich indicated that he had thought Dennis’ interpretation applied as well, but that both Janet Campbell and External Counsel have said that a majority of the total votes cast were required. Dennis Leung suggested that in light of that misunderstanding that the vote be re-run perhaps at the next face to face. Mike responded that we would revisit this topic shortly on either the October phone call or at the October face to face meeting.
Etienne Juliot asked if Mike intended to make any public comment on the topic. Mike replied that he did not. Etienne asked if Apache had a TCK license with Oracle. Mike confirmed that they do and that a number of Projects at Apache run TCKs within the context of Apache.
Mike confirmed with the Board that he wanted to go ahead with the Board call scheduled for Wednesday, October 17th in addition to the face to face meeting scheduled for October.
Juno 4.2 Performance Issues
Mik Kersten introduced a discussion of community concerns around Eclipse Juno and 4.2 performance. Mik indicated that when he reviewed the bugs, blogs and Architecture Council minutes, he thought the first thing that needed to be decided was whether there was a problem that effects Eclipse as a whole. Mik added that internally at Tasktop, they would not be switching to 4.2 and asked others on the Board what their plans were. Pat Huff indicated that IBM was intending to switch and Paul Clenahan added that Actuate intended to do the same. Mike Milinkovich commented that in looking at the bug and the list of dependencies, there are five or six known issues that the Project is working on. Mike added that the Foundation does believe that 4.2 is useable, and added that there are many people using it every day. Mike commented that there are some scenarios where people are having difficulty and the Project is working through those as best they can. Pat Huff added that bugs needed to be raised for specific problems that the project can work on.
Mik further asked whether people should wait for the Kepler simultaneous release to come. Mike Milinkovich commented that it was not the Board’s decision to move the simultaneous release to Eclipse 4, but rather the Eclipse PMC and the Planning Council. Mik responded that making Eclipse 4 a success was identified as a priority by the Board. Pat Huff commented that IBM was committed to 4.x, and that the 3.x stream has no future.
Mike asked Pat Huff and John Arthorne whether they had any insight into whether there would be any focus on performance enhancements in the SR2 timeframe. John Arthorne responded that performance was certainly a focus, but that the Eclipse project team was much smaller than they were for 3.0 when it shipped in 2004. John added that the team would fix problems as best they could but that the rate would not be as fast as it had been in the past. Mik Kersten commented that if the rate was too slow, Eclipse stands to see some erosion in the value of Eclipse because of how strongly it was being promoted. Mik added that Eclipse was hiding 3.x and doing what could be done to move the ecosystem to 4.x before it had hardened and that approach presented a risk. John Arthorne added that keeping the 3.8 stream alive didn’t help Eclipse either. Mike Milinkovich commented that the Eclipse Platform team is relatively small and that they are not going to do a 3.9, so there was no other path forward. Pat Huff indicated that the Eclipse Platform team is looking for as much help from the community as they could. Pat added that letting the team know exactly where the problems are was one way to help. Mike Milinkovich commented that anyone who can provide a repeatable test case is extremely helpful. Mike added that if you looked on the bug where these performance issues were being discussed, there are a few cases that has happened, and it has really helped focus efforts.
Mike Milinkovich
commented that one of the difficulties is that performance tests are
not currently being run. Mike added that the Eclipse Foundation
staff is doing what it can to get those tests re-established and run
on Eclipse.org hardware, highlighting that Google had donated $20K to
buy hardware. Mike indicated that the Foundation was still
waiting on information from the Platform Team on what to buy.
Mike further commented that the crisis would focus people’s
attention on the resource constraints of the Platform Team.
Achim Loerke indicated that his company has decided to hire someone
but that they were having difficulty finding someone. Mike
Milinkovich offered to help. Mike thanked Mike for
leading the discussion surrounding 4.x.
Mike Milinkovich declared the meeting adjourned.
* * * * *
This being a true and accurate record of the proceedings of this Meeting of the Board of Directors held on September 19, 2012, is attested to and signed by me below.
/s/Janet Campbell
Secretary of Meeting