2013 Candidate:
Ed Merks

Eclipse is an evolving diverse community driven by a broadening constellation of contributors: large and small commercial interests, educational institutions, and our dedicated committer community, i.e., people who do day-to-day development at Eclipse like you and me. With increasing diversity, particularly the shift from a small number of large commercial interests to a broad spectrum of organization types and sizes, our influence as individuals grows, presenting interesting challenges and exciting opportunities. Even the types of the projects hosted at Eclipse is diversifying to include things like Orion, i.e., projects that aren't written in Java and don't use OSGi. To facilitate healthy, long-term growth, we need more flexible licensing and infrastructure to ensure that Eclipse is an attractive place to host a broadening range of open-source projects. As your committer representative on the board, I will employ my six years of experience to promote the rights and privileges of committers and to focus on such issues. I will continue to be a visible and approachable technical representative, who navigates the political landscape on your behalf. I feel I've demonstrated this with my long track record as your representative on the board. My background as a Canadian immigrant, born in the Netherlands, currently living in Berlin and learning German, sensitizes to me the fact that great communities span cultural and linguistic boundaries.

Cliche as it may sound, I believe strongly that helping is its own reward. I answer questions daily on a broad range of newsgroups, not just those for my own projects, I blog to promote a sense of community, I fix bugzillas quickly for the users of my software, and I develop cool new features whenever possible. I am deeply honored to have received Eclipse's Lifetime Contribution Award in 2012. I feel my track record as an Eclipse committer since 2002 is demonstrated with deeds not merely with words. I focus on being a positive influence and on balancing the drive to fix problems and to make improvements with recognition of the fact that real problems are difficult to solve and that what constitutes improvement is often highly subjective. A case in point is the issue of one committer one vote which required a change to the by-laws and was approved by the membership in 2011. Not everyone agreed this was an improvement, independent committers like me lost a degree of influence for their vote, but I'm quite sure the vast majority of the committers feel everyone's vote is now more fairly reflected in the elections.

I will continue to work hard to ensure that Eclipse's processes are the best they can be and are ever improving, e.g., streamlining the external contribution process via git. I believe in minimal processes that focus on best practices and achievable, pragmatic results. I oppose restrictions that seek to coerce compliance to arbitrary questionable rules, particularly rules that are primarily designed to exclude certain groups or to make first and second class citizens in our community. e.g., non-proportional committer voting. I can be counted upon as the person who will speak up diplomatically even when personal risk is involved. As your representative I commit to working tirelessly to promote not only Eclipse itself but also the community that drives it. It has been an honor and a privilege to serve as your representative these past years. If reelected, you can count on the fact that Merks works for you.