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[dsdp-tm-dev] Contributions and Control (was: RE: DSDP-TM- Discovery)
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Hello Victor,
I very much understand your concerns.
In fact, we at WindRiver have been in a similar situation -
a colleague of mine has added "Rename Refactoring" to the CDT without being a
CDT committer, and he has added a fully new UI component for Search to Eclipse
Platform without being a Platform committer. That colleague became a CDT
committer only 1 year after his contribution was accepted and lots of bugs were
fixed by him -- all by contributing patches. He still is no Platform
committer.
The Eclipse Standard Charter, which we also use for our
project, says:
" Users
who contribute software, documentation, or other materially useful content
become developers [...] Developers are expected to be proactive in reporting
problems in the bug tracking system [...] Developers who give frequent and
valuable contributions to a Project, or component of a Project (in the case of
large Projects), can have their status promoted to that of a "Committer" for
that Project or component respectively [...] Becoming a Committer is a privilege
that is earned by contributing and showing discipline and good judgment. It is a
responsibility that should be neither given nor taken
lightly."
This charter has proven useful for a lot of projects, and I
hope you understand that I want to follow that charter. I'm sure Javier can
become a committer real soon, following the common process [the CDT taking 1
year to accept my colleague should be a really extraordinary
exception].
Until that happens, I can personally assure you that
we'll take care of Javier's
contributions and merge bugfixes promptly. After all, Eclipse is all about
community -- you gain from the community's project and we gain from your
contribution. It doesn't help anybody to step on each others toes. And, Javier
is the expert on his contributions, so it's in all our interest to keep the
project going and merge improvements or fixes promptly.
I think that putting some code into Open Source is always
kind of a risk and means giving up some control. That is somehow scary, but it
is also the power of Open Source -- meaning that others can step in and make
improvements that you haven't even thought about yourself. The larger the
Community grows, the better the product will be (and vice versa). It's not just
an Eclipse thing but a general Open Source thing. In fact, Ian Skerret -
Director of Marketing at Eclipse Foundation - said at his talk at EclipseCon
that not trying to control things too much is one of the key points of success
for an Open Source project.
I hope I could help you with a tough decision. We are
looking forward to Javier's contributions a lot.
Feel free to contact me if you have any more questions - by
E-Mail, Phone or Skype [martin.oberhuber] if you want.
Cheers,
Martin
--
Martin Oberhuber - WindRiver,
Austria
+43(662)457915-85
Hi Martin,
Javier mention to me today that he has a beta working
for the Discovery service based on what it has been discussed with the
community. This is excellent news, and this is mainly due to the fact
that Javier is pretty much working full time on this.
As an Engineering manager I'm responsible to deliver
specified Product Requirements for Symbian OS, by making the right
implementation technology choices. Javier is our best engineer on comms, and
he has been investigating the use of DSDP-TM to fulfill this requirements.
While this is a strong possibility, it will still need further
investment.
I'm very concerned
about the lack of influence over the outcome of this invesment. For example,
once Javier publishes the Discovery service, and if it gets submitted into
CVS, he won't even be able to fix bugs on his own code.
I hope you understand my position, could you help us
finding a way forward?
Thanks,
Victor Tuson
Palau
Engineering Tools Manager
Ph: 0207 154 1840
Mob: 07901 821 410
E:Victor.Palau@xxxxxxxxxxx
ET Website
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