Keep in mind the cost cutting is going to be exaggerated and it's going to be difficult to measure any long term damage this change will have on the JavaFX community. People like me are going to stop participating. There'll be fewer bug reports, it's going to take fewer people to manage the bug load, and fewer developers to fix bugs. Of course that's going to translate into additional savings. Plus, someone's going to get praised for cutting costs while improving reliability. The reality is JavaFX will end up with more undiscovered bugs.
Why can't an effort be made to influence JBS policies before making the switch? My concern is that once the cost savings of the switch have been realized, there's going to be no incentive to re-include people like me. I completely understand the justification for merging with JBS, but I'm extremely frustrated that Oracle hasn't considered the impact an immediate switch will have on the community. This is a predictable transition and there's no excuse for failing to come up with a solution that doesn't alienate existing participants before making the change. Ryan Jaeb On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 8:54 AM, Richard Bair <richard.b...@oracle.com> wrote: > Hi everybody, > > Moving to JBS is both good and bad. The good: > > - Reduce costs associated with the project > - Reduce internal overhead for development processes (everybody on > Java uses JBS for everything so having a second JIRA makes everything > harder with release management, management, even engineers who have to > switch from one to the other) > - JBS has dedicated engineering for support and maintenance, upgrades, > etc > - Making OpenJFX more of a core component of OpenJDK > - Issues can be indexed on Google etc. (no account required to view > issues) > > > The bad: > > - Contributing is hard (nay, impossible?) if you are not at least an > OpenJDK Author > > > This last bullet is a huge problem IMO and the reason why we didn’t roll > out a migration to JBS 1-2 years ago. But that is an OpenJDK policy issue, > and all we can do is raise the issue and voice support for a more lenient > policy. I actually don’t know if bugs.java.com allows you to comment on > your own bug, but I don’t think it does. What happens if you file a bug and > the dev cannot reproduce? Or they need more info? How do you add more info? > I’m not even sure this is possible without emailing the engineer directly. > > From what I see, JBS still doesn't support self-creation of accounts. > > > This is correct. The only way for people to file issues freely is through > bugs.java.com > > perhaps I can ask for one and perhaps Oracle would grant one (to be > verified). > > > I am certain you could get one, you’ve been an active member of the > community for a long time. > > But I don't think this would apply for a common employee of a corporate > that, among other things, also develops in Java; not mentioning that not > having the possibility of instantly signing in is not good, and would > discourage almost everybody I know. The "bridge" offered by bugs.sun.com > is cumbersome too. In any case, this is completely different from any other > FLOSS project around, where access to the issue tracker is immediate and > easy. > > > I agree. > > I understand that, being Java so popular, Oracle might fear some kind of > massive, low-level posting of issues, that would be expensive to manage. If > this is the case, let's discuss it. > > > This is exactly the issue. We know from the last 20 years that in fact we > get a huge amount of completely bogus bugs that get filed via > bugs.java.com (previously bugs.sun.com). Wild stuff from end users like > “I can’t reboot my computer” and so forth. The concern with JBS (as I > understand it) was that we’d end up with 10’s or 100,000’s of thousands of > user accounts, many of which would be one-shot submitters associated with > bogus issues. > > One solution would be if Atlasssian had some kind of “guest” mode where > submitter accounts could be created but they would not show up in lists for > things like assignees etc so they don’t clutter other views. Another > solution could be to have a system whereby anybody who submits a good issue > through bugs.java.com would get an email allowing them to sign up on JBS > if they had an issue. > > Or, maybe the concern is actually not a problem — since Applets etc would > point towards bugs.java.com, the only people (hopefully) coming to JBS > are serious developers, the doors could be opened. > > Dalibor would probably know the right alias to discuss the JBS policy, and > I do believe, personally, that the policy is too restrictive and > discourages cooperation and needs to be changed. But I also think moving to > JBS is a good thing for a bunch of other reasons (and cost cutting can’t be > ignored) and actually I’m looking forward to the ability to browse issues > without having to get an account (not like I don’t have an account, but I > mean for all the folks out there who just want to see the issues :-)). > > Cheers > Richard >
