Add minutes for the SIP meeting in October 2016

Author: jvican

sips/minutes/2016-10-25-sip-minutes.md

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+---
+layout: sip-landing
+title: SIP Meeting Minutes - 25th October 2016
+---
+
+# Minutes
+
+The following agenda was distributed to attendees:
+
+| Topic | Reviewer |
+| --- | --- |
+| Discussion of the voting system | N/A |
+| [SIP-20: Improved Lazy Val Initialization](http://docs.scala-lang.org/sips/pending/improved-lazy-val-initialization.html) | Sébastien Doeraene |
+| [SIP-27: Trailing commas](https://github.com/scala/scala.github.com/pull/533#issuecomment-232959066) | Eugene Burmako |
+
+Jorge Vicente Cantero was the Process Lead and acting secretary of the meeting.
+
+* **Decided to reaccept for review**: SIP-27: Trailing commas
+* **Under review**: SIP-20: Improved Lazy Val Initialization
+
+## Date, Time and Location
+
+The meeting took place at 5:00pm Central European Time / 8:00am Pacific Daylight
+Time on Tuesday, October 25th, 2016 via Google Hangouts.
+
+Minutes were taken by Jorge Vicente Cantero, acting secretary.
+
+## Attendees
+
+Attendees Present:
+
+* Martin Odersky ([@odersky](https://github.com/odersky)), EPFL
+* Seth Tisue ([@SethTisue](https://github.com/SethTisue)), EPFL
+* Iulian Dragos ([@dragos](https://github.com/dragos)), Independent
+* Heather Miller ([@heathermiller](https://github.com/heathermiller)), Scala Center
+* Sébastien Doeraene ([@sjrd](https://github.com/sjrd)), EPFL
+* Eugene Burmako ([@xeno-by](https://github.com/xeno-by)), EPFL
+* Jorge Vicente Cantero ([@jvican](https://github.com/jvican)), Process Lead
+* Adriaan Moors ([@adriaanm](https://github.com/adriaanm)), Lightbend
+
+## Apologies
+
+* Josh Suereth ([@jsuereth](https://github.com/jsuereth)), Google
+
+## Proceedings
+### Opening Remarks
+
+After some controversy sprung by the [latest SIP-27
+vote](https://github.com/scala/scala-lang/pull/477), the SIP Process Lead
+cancelled the vote on the SIP-27: Trailing Commas, and invited the Committee to
+discuss new voting rules to help clarify the process voting system.
+
+The issue was caused by a legal void on the rounding of the 70% rule.
+Traditionally, votes are not rounded up. However, the SIP Process Lead
+took the decision to round up the SIP-27 vote percentage, which was 66%.
+This decision was taken in the best spirit of the rule, which was only introduced
+to ensure that simple majorities (50%) are not enough for accepting a proposal.
+
+Before the meeting, the SIP Process Lead shared this email with all the
+Committee members:
+
+> The majority-plus-two rule sets a concrete threshold and fits the spirit of
+> the rule (not having simple majority, but a
+> [supermajority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermajority)). The 70% rule is
+> too strict, especially for committees that are not big, as ours. After some
+> research, we can choose the [two-thirds
+> rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermajority#Two-thirds_vote) used in a
+> lot of political parties, parliaments, boards and committees.
+
+### Deciding the voting system
+
+Sébastien starts the discussion pointing out that he would like to have a simple
+percentage, without any rounding. Heather argues that this percentage changes
+depending on the number of the present Committee Members. Seth comments that
+it has been proposed in several online channels that all the Committee members
+should vote, even if they cannot attend the meeting. All the Committee agrees on
+this, but the main consequence is that the voting period is not predictable
+anymore, since there's not a fixed deadline to vote. Martin proposes to choose
+this fixed deadline case-by-case.
+
+Martin proposes that there's a meta rule to only accept a proposal if 50% of
+all the Committee members vote for it, and then to have another percentage on
+the actual vote. Seth, Eugene and Heather don't like this idea. Heather brings
+up the issue of abstentions, should they still be considered as no's even if
+people are on vacation or cannot vote?. Adriaan says this is a fair concern, and
+thinks that there should be a fixed deadline for voting.
+
+All the Committee agrees that with the new rules the Committee wouldn't vote
+publicly, because Committee members can notify their vote after the meeting and
+before the fixed deadline.
+
+Martin proposes to keep the old rules, the 70% percentage rule. Jorge proposes
+to have simpler and more predictable rules, and replace 70% with the two-thirds
+rule. Martin comes back to the abstentions point: he doesn't want them to be
+considered as no, because with the current rules Committee members could block
+the whole decision process. Some Committee members point out that this wouldn't
+happen because then the quorum wouldn't be reached. The discussion shifts
+towards the quorum point: is it necessary anymore? Heather and Adriaan say that
+it is, because it ensures that a reasonable number of Committee members meet to
+discuss proposals and convince each other about the pros and cons. All the
+Committee finally decides to not consider abstentions as no's. Adriaan, however,
+suggests that we should penalize people that abstain too often.
+
+Another system proposed by Martin helps survive the abstention issue mentioned
+before. For a proposal to pass, at least 50% of all the Committee 
+and two-thirds of all the people voting (not counting abstentions) must accept
+it. The quorum rule is kept. After some discussion, the Committee unanimously
+votes in favor of the new rules.
+
+### Discussion of SIP-27: Trailing Commas
+
+Eugene describes what happened in the last meeting. Martin asks if there is a
+concrete proposal. Jorge says that he thinks that Dale would push for the new
+line specialized case. Martin proposes to push for a more concrete proposal
+because the specification cannot be so open-ended to properly analyze the
+consequences of the suggested changes.
+
+Seth and Adriaan voice their opinions on trailing commas again, they don't agree
+this is a problem that should be solved in the language. Martin changes his view
+on the subject, and provided that the proposal does no harm to the syntax of the
+language and doesn't cause problems, he would accept the change. He also says
+that it wouldn't be good to contradict last month's vote on the proposal.
+Heather says that she's in favor of trailing commas because makes beginners be
+less confused by the syntax and help people get started with the language.
+Iulian doesn't like the specialized version, he would prefer a general version.
+
+**Outcome**: All the Committee decides to vote on accepting the proposal again for a final
+review with a clear specification of the changes. Seth and Adriaan vote against,
+the rest of the Committee except Josh vote in favor of it. According to our new
+rules, Josh gets to decide whether the proposal will be readmitted for review or
+cancelled (**NOTE**: Josh votes in favor of trailing commas one week after the
+meeting). Trailing commas will be reviewed in November.
+
+### Discussion of SIP-20: Improved Lazy Val Initialization
+
+Sébastien comments the changes that Dmitry has introduced to the proposal.
+Several new schemes have been added to the proposal based on his experience in
+Dotty, in which the championed scheme is already implemented.
+
+There are no clear winner in the case of local lazy vals, but there seems to be
+two clear candidates for the non-local lazy vals (B4-general and B6).
+Both are faster than the existing implementation in the contended case but B4
+general is 4x and B6 is only 2x. However, for the uncontended case B4 general is
+30% slower than the existing implementation, while B6 is on par, up to +-5%.
+Dmitry recommends the B6 case because it's a *pure* win. Memory-wise, B6 would
+have a smaller memory footprint.
+
+Sébastien comments on the increase of the bytecode for the getter of the lazy
+val, which is 4x bigger. This could make a difference, although the benchmarks
+do not show any negative impact of it (probably because the previous
+implementation was bigger than the limits set by the JVM to benefit from
+code inlining).
+
+Jorge comments that there's no implementation of this proposal for scalac. This
+means that someone should step up and provide such implementation, because
+Dmitry does not have time for it. Adriaan comments on the fact that B6 uses
+`sun.misc.Unsafe`, which he prefers that the compiler doesn't depend on to run
+in other platforms that don't allow it (Google App Engine). Sébastien highlights
+that the proposal could use var handles, which are planned to be shipped on Java
+9.
+
+Heather proposes to mark this proposal as dormant, since it's lacking an
+implementation. She wants to let other people claim its ownership and provide an
+implementation if they care about this issue.
+
+**Outcome**: The Committee agrees to mark the proposal as dormant and let
+someone pick it up and provide an implementation. Ideally, this implementation
+should run in Java 8 and don't depend on var handles. The SIP Process Lead will
+wait some time to receive another candidate from the current author, Dmitry. If
+he doesn't propose anything, the SIP will be marked as dormant.
+
+## Closing remarks
+See you next time!