The OpenJDK community consists of lots of people who have different roles and responsibilities in a project. Such a structure evolved as a consequence of the scale of the project and its significance, otherwise it wouldn't be controllable and you wouldn't be able to progress further. The way in which OpenJDK is managed and structured can be described in two hierarchies: one is functional and the other is governance. These two hierarchies intercept, but not much. The only role which is present in both is JDK Lead, which is an OpenJDK member appointed by Oracle to manage the Java release project.

Functional hierarchy controls the change and development process. It defines the relationship between all the community members who are involved in proposing and making changes in OpenJDK. On the whole, it can be represented by the structure shown in the following figure:

A participant can be anyone who has participated in an OpenJDK project and this can be any type of participation. For...