Those slides are unbalanced and don't mention some of the recent main achievements; for example the IDE download stats which remain encouraging despite many were saying the IDE would die soon, the increasing amount of contributors and improved diversity to the core parts, and the new programming and technology stacks the Eclipse IDE can now reach with way lower investment...
It would be nice to see in front of the negative points some concrete proposals of how a working group may help in making things better. I'm pretty sure it's again the resource/revenue/funding topic that will be mentioned, but the big question is more how can such a working group concretely generate more contribution (direct manpower or funding) to the Eclipse IDE stack. What's the growth opportunity the WG will unlock?
If it is the later, I fear there is a bad trend about working groups in general, and this one would be no exception: if the idea is that the general non-WG Eclipse projects and technologies are now excluded from some good old Eclipse Foundation services (eg promoting events), then it means that working group are not coming as an opportunity for more services towards projects, but more as a threat about less services offered to projects that are not affiliated with working groups; and in the end, to committers who are bound to projects, not to working groups.
So I'd really like to know what is the added-value this working group is expected to add to the statu quo for committers, because at the moment, I don't see anything obvious and -at the contrary- I (over-?)interpret some signs that the creation of this working group may actually come with a loss of services for committers in general.
My 2c, but actually some multiple k$ questions.
Mickael
