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The java.net Fairness Board

Nominations begin this Sunday for a seat on the java.net Fairness Board. Here is a description of the Fairness board and how the election process works.

What is the Fairness Board?

java.net's governance defines several Boards to help ensure the community runs smoothly and fairly. One of them is the java.net Fairness Board.

The java.net Fairness Board consists of three (3) members and provides oversight for critical java.net activities to ensure that java.net operates in a fair way and follows the java.net Guiding Principles. Their responsibility and authority includes:

• Settle any dispute between members of java.net regarding the application of the Guiding Principles.

• Review java.net processes and policies to make sure they are consistent with the Guiding Principles.

• Review all changes to java.net Governance.

• Manage an appeals process for members who dispute a decision made by the Community Manager.

One seat on the Fairness Board is appointed by Sun and is currently filled by Ron Goldman. The remaining two seats each have two year terms and are elected by the community. The terms of the elected seats are staggered so that only one of them is up for election each year. Rob Clark and Ken Arnold were invited to fill these seats when java.net launched last June.

As announced in a previous weblog, one of the two elected seats is up for election this year.

How will the election be run?

This is the first election on java.net and here is some important information on how it will run:

• java.net Elections will follow this time line:
  • Week 1: Election Announcement (Week of June 14)
  • Week 2 & 3: Nomination Period (June 20 - July 3)
  • Week 4: Candidates Announced (Week of July 5)
  • Week 5: Election (July 11 - July 17)

• Only java.net members can vote and be nominated. Any java.net member can be nominated and all java.net members are encouraged to vote.

• A voting project has been created to facilitate all elections.

• Nominations will be done by posting the name and java.net ID of the nominee to a specified forum in the voting project during the nomination period.

• java.net Members will vote for candidates by emailing the name and java.net ID of a candidate to the vote mail list.

• The candidate that receives the most votes during the Election period will be declared the winner.

• Election results will be announced the week after the Election period has passed.

  More information on the upcoming election can be found in the voting project. You can also learn more about the Fairness Board in our governance.

  Visit our Voting on java.net page to understand more about voting.
  
  

  Microsoft says we should pay for email. When was it ever free?

  Posted by jbob on March 07, 2004 at 08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)
  
  

  In a March 4th article on cnn.com titled "Paying for E-Mail May Be Anti-Spam Tactic", Anick Jesdanun reported that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, among others, is proposing a per message charge on email messages in order to combat SPAM.

  It appears that companies, like Microsoft, Hashcash, and Goodwill Systems, are more interested in making money off of the volume than in solving the problem. Score one for capitalism, zero for customer service.

  It is dissapointing that the article's author did not point out that email is not free today. We pay for email one way or another. The dial-up or broadband services that we need to access our "free" Yahoo! and Hotmail accounts is not free. The monthly membership fees to AOL and MSN that include email in their service is notoriously not free.

  Passing the cost of SPAM onto customers is a slap in the face and adds insult to injury. It is shortcomings in the mail systems that allow for SPAM to circulate. Fix the problem.

  Here's a suggestion: If ISP's took some responsibility fo their mail servers, they could revoke accounts that generate spam and they could provide their customers with intelligent firewall capabilities for fighting spam. For example, allowing me the ability to control who can email me (like I can do with Instant Messenger). Some email systems and clients can do this. If I subscribe to a mail list, I would need to configure my account to let that through.

  Read the article yourself and share your thoughts and conclusions in our community discussion.
  
  
  

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