[actf-dev] ACTF community development

[Wayne Beaton <wayne@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings ACTF developers,

I've been looking over your project and have noticed that, while you
seem to be doing a great job of getting code into CVS, your community
development efforts don't seem to be bearing fruit.

Specifically, 

* There is relatively little activity on the actf-dev mailing list.

* There is almost no activity on the newsgroup

* All but one of the bug reports in Bugzilla were reported by project
committers (I didn't fully scrutinize the list, but this appears to be
correct; at very least all but one of the bug reports comes from a
ibm.com address).

* You have future releases indicated, but the project plan is quite out
of date (it ends at 1Q2008).

I am encouraged by the nature of many of the bug reports; they do seem
to indicate that you're trying to be transparent in introducing
enhancements. Unfortunately, the few reports that I reviewed seemed a
little short. That is, there is very little discussion around the
features which leads me to believe that--by the time the bug has been
created--you've already decided what to do (which, in turn, leads me to
believe that most of your planning is done in private).

Transparency is an important part of being an Eclipse project and a
valuable tool for attracting community. Having a thriving community is
also an important part of being an Eclipse project.

As far as I can tell, there is basically no community developing around
the project.

Have I missed something? Are you engaging your community using different
mechanisms? Can you point to a couple of adopters of ACTF technology?

More importantly, is there something that I can do to help you develop a
community around ACTF?

Wayne Beaton
Eclipse Technology Project PMC