Java Users Groups as full MPWG members

[Vincent Mayers]

I am am an organizer, board member, and treasurer of the Atlanta Java Users Group (AJUG). I'd like to find out whether AJUG, which is incorporated and a registered nonprofit can participate in the MicroProfile Working Group as a full voting member

Cheers

Vincent 

@vincentmayers

[Paul Buck]

Hi Vincent,

Thanks to the AJUG's for their interest in Eclipse MicroProfile and the possibility of joining the MicroProfile working group once formed. At this time the working group is being proposed and not yet created, we do not have a finalized draft charter or working group participation agreement. Your interest however is noted and I do not foresee any problem with AJUG joining as a voting member.

 

One of the prerequisites to joining the MicroProfile working group will be for all participants in the working group to be Solutions members or better in the Eclipse Foundation. At the appropriate time feel free to connect with our membership team if you have any questions.

Thanks ... Paul

[Vincent Mayers]

Hi Paul thank you for the reply. This is very encouraging . One of the things that I love about Eclipse and in this case the MicroProfile community is that we are able to have this kind of discourse in an open forum.

A very quick follow up if you don’t mind as this is relevant. I understand from the public calls that the the MPWG is in the Proposal phase of the ESF working groups process, and that to move forward to be able to release of code, needs to be in the incubation phase https://www.eclipse.org/org/workinggroups/process.php The community at large is waiting with a high level of anticipation for the next release so we would be honored to be able to join the MPWG and help MicroProfile and by association, the ESF, to accelerate this release date.

If I may ask for your perspective on one more thing as its clear you are best placed to answer. Regarding the WSF solution provider fee structure. In the  eclipse.org he membership agreement https://www.eclipse.org/org/documents/eclipse_membership_agreement.pdf it is indicated that for a Solution member with Annual Corporate Revenue Less Than $1 million, and less than 10 employees and contractors the fee is $1,500. This membership types doc https://www.eclipse.org/membership/become_a_member/membershipTypes.php indicates that the fee for a nonprofit solutions member would be $5,000. In a scenario where the application comes from an organization with revenues of less than $1 million that is a nonprofit, is there a reason that they would need to pay a higher fee? $5,000 vs $1,500?

Thanks again for your time, and all you do for the community

Cheers

Vincent

@vincentmayers

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[Paul Buck]

Hi Vincent,

To join the Eclipse Foundation at the Solutions level, JUGs are advised to check “Revenues < $1M and fewer than 10 employees”, and check Solutions membership in the Foundation's membership agreement. The fee for that option is $1,500. Note that joining the MicroProfile working group, once formed will be done by a separate agreement and fee schedule.

Thanks ... Paul

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[Scott Stark]

A question asked during the MP call in the context of this question, but not asked here was would such a full member JUG contribute to satisfying the five participants needed for a working group to exit the incubation phase? The relevant section of the EF working group process guide is here:

https://www.eclipse.org/org/workinggroups/process.php#wg-incubation

This needs an answer to fully answer the question that came up.

[Paul Buck]

Good question Scott. I would like to start with some context and then get into your question. Note that the MicroProfile working group is currently in the Proposal Phase. The key elements of the exit criteria to be met to be met to go from Proposal to Incubating are: 

• Draft Working Group Charter complete;

• Participant Pipeline established; and

• Executive Director approval.

Once those criteria are met there are also a set to exit Incubation. Now to your question regarding exiting Incubation and moving to Proposal. The criteria in question is:

• Minimum of five Participants committed;

And specifically do JUGs count towards the five? The answer is yes they can, there are however important considerations regarding vendor neutrality and intellectual property flow. Although JUGs bring diversity to the working group, they do not bring vendor neutrality which is the objective of the criteria. 

Diversity is not synonymous with vendor neutrality. Vendor neutrality in the context of a specification process involves the participation of the vendors who will be implementing the specifications. This is for at least two reasons: (a) to ensure that the voices of those expected to implement the specifications are heard, and (b) to ensure that there is patent pooling from the relevant vendors for the protection of all of the ecosystem participants. The recruitment of JUGs can be helpful in increasing the diversity of the MicroProfile community and providing valuable input from the downstream application builders, but it does not however contribute to the vendor neutrality of its specifications.

Another consideration which contributes to (b) is IP flow, when a JUG joins the Eclipse Foundation and a working group it cannot sign an MCCA on behalf of its members permitting them to join specification projects. JUG members no doubt are bound to employment agreements with their employers that covers their IP. So for a JUG member to be a committer on a specification project either their employer needs to be a member of the working group or the committer is a committer member of the working group and like Jakarta, their employer signs a consent agreement.

Thanks ... Paul

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[Reza Rahman]

I was wondering about this too from a Jakarta EE Ambassadors standpoint. Thanks for clarifying. It makes perfect sense to me.

Reza Rahman
Jakarta EE Ambassador, Author, Blogger, Speaker

Please note views expressed here are my own as an individual community member and do not reflect the views of my employer.

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[David Blevins]

On Jul 24, 2020, at 10:16 AM, Paul Buck <paul...@eclipse-foundation.org> wrote:

And specifically do JUGs count towards the five? The answer is yes they can, there are however important considerations regarding vendor neutrality and intellectual property flow. Although JUGs bring diversity to the working group, they do not bring vendor neutrality which is the objective of the criteria. 

Say for example the breakdown was 5 corporations consisting of 3 vendors and 2 jugs.  Would that be sufficient to fill the 5 participants requirement to graduate incubation?

-David

[Scott Stark]

I think the diversity / vendor neutrality is a debatable point. Example 1, Red Hat has been asked to participate in the Asciidoc WG, but we have no implementation. We are simply an end user of the technology. Yes our developers are able to contribute to specs without any additional IP agreements, but this is really not strengthening the IP set making up the specs.

JUGs have a pool of interested developers that can contribute to specifications once they have also completed a participation agreement that their employer has signed. Their employer may have IP that overlaps with the specifications of interest. I really don't see how you can distinguish between Red Hat's developers and JUG developers on this point of a participant pipeline.

[Bob Paulin]

Hi,

I'm Bob Paulin Chair of the Chicago Java User Group (CJUG) Board.   Scott beat us to asking this same question and I agree that JUGs being not vendor neutral is a debatable point.  I also agree that JUGs like ours are not interested in joining working groups to create implementations but as end users of the technology we do have an interest in Work Group Governance (voting).  I understand the point about employers being involved in the release of IP of an individual.  I believe this can be managed at an individual level of the contributor rather than saying the CJUG can sign the MCCA for all it's members.  From an organizational level we have a diverse board comprised of people from many different employers (and self employed like myself) that I think would enhance the governance of projects such as MicroProfile.  I take great care as chair to ensure that the decision of our board take into consideration the diverse views of our board members so that they are in fact vendor neutral.  I think it's very important to separate IP production of vendor implementers from project governance which is what I believe the incubator participants are there to provide.  I also don't see any mention of these additional requirements (such as signing the  MCCA ) of organizations being required to in the public working group documentation [1]. 

- Bob Paulin,

CJUG Board Chair

[1] https://www.eclipse.org/org/workinggroups/process.php

[Paul Buck]

Hi Bob,

The MCCA will be embedded in the Participation Agreement for the MicroProfile working group, we are not at the point with MicroProfile where we typically create the Participation Agreements. Once the Draft Working Group Charter is complete and approved by the Executive Director the Foundation (as the exit to the Proposal Phase) we will get to work on the Participation Agreements for member organizations and individual committers for MicroProfile.

For examples from an existing working group please see the Jakarta EE Working Group Participation Agreement and the Jakarta EE Working Group Individual Participation Agreement. The CJUG would join with the former, and JUG members that are committers on specification projects join with the latter. We ask that JUGs agree to the terms of the MCCA, and that both parties recognize that no JUG members are covered as they aren’t employees. I think this aligns with what you proposed.

When the Participation Agreements are available for the MicroProfile working group I will be sure to notify this mailing list and follow-up with you and Vincent. 

Thanks ... Paul

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[Bob Paulin]

Hi Paul,

Allowing the JUG to join with the WG participation agreement and giving the option for members to join with an individual participation agreement makes sense here.  Thanks for the reply.

Sincerely,

Bob Paulin