| Re: [eclipse-ide-wg] Essence of the WG (was: 1st meeting of Eclipse IDE WG interested parties) |
Hmhhh...I kind of get why "developer evangelists" would be hired
by the foundation, but IMO, the Eclipse foundation does not and
should not have people on staff that are experts on the project
technologies to the extent that they would be able to mentor a
"software engineering" intern. What am I missing? To me, it's
still a bit of a mystery what exactly the funds raised by an IDE
WG would be spent on. Would we start paying IBM for the developers
they have on JDT? I'm aware there are cases where money is more
easily found than staff, but I'm not aware that the IDE is one of
those projects.
/Thomas
Mike,
Thanks for the additional details. Yes of course my slides intended to focus on the risks and problems (where action is warranted) rather than on flattering ourselves on the many things we are indeed currently doing well (where creative marketing could help highlight these things).
As for the value a Working Group can bring to the table, consider this slide deck that was brought to my attention just yesterday:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_7s8xtuzPQzHj9lrOh-Vnb2YHq72v2CkFrO0fdppfDI
This is from the activities of the IOT Working Group:
https://www.eclipse.org/lists/iot-wg/msg01745.html
It's an example of the creative ideas and activities that a Working Group can support to complement the activities the Working Group's related projects.
Regards,
Ed
On 03.03.2021 22:04, Mike Milinkovich wrote:
Mickael,
Comments are inlined below.
@Ed - feel free to disagree with how I have characterized your slides :)
On 2021-03-03 8:10 a.m., Mickael Istria wrote:
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...Perhaps. But I think Ed was simply trying to focus on the issues to be addressed rather that the victories to be celebrated. I think everyone here agrees that project diversity and contribution have grown in recent times. But at the same time, I think that everyone here agrees that there are issues with the sustainability of the current processes that need to be addressed.
I know that there is debate within the Eclipse Project as a whole about whether to focus more on increasing contribution or on platform quality. I see that as orthogonal to the topic of creating a working group which is the subject of this mailing list. Please don't repeat that debate here.
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?At least for the moment there is no intent to have have the working group "concretely generate more contribution". As you've pointed out, that's already working well. I think that the goals of the working group are laid quite well in the Vision and Scope section of the draft charter.
tl;dr: it's mostly about fixing the sustainability and resource issues in the SimRel.
I've recently stumbled up this tweet: https://twitter.com/EclipseFdn/status/1366782105993232386 . The EF used to promote events related to "Eclipse Projects" or "Eclipse technologies" in general. I read it seems now more restricted to working groups. Is this an actual restriction?No it is not. Never has been and never will be. One tweet does not make or imply policy. For example, we currently have two full press releases under construction to celebrate some project releases. That said, it should be obvious that working groups which have marketing budgets and which staff full-time marketing professionals get more marketing done. However, the intent of this working group is not primarily about marketing. It is about ensuring the sustainability of SimRel as the platform for the Eclipse desktop technologies ecosystem.
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.I don't see this as changing very much for the committers on the individual IDE platform projects. That is not the intent. Nor is it a requirement for creating a working group. Of course we will continue to encourage all companies involved in the working group to contribute developers to the projects. But at least as of this moment we don't expect that to substantially change the status quo in the projects.
Eclipse working groups do not change project governance. The purpose of all working groups are to complement projects by providing additional services, programs, or value not performed well by open source projects. Typical examples include marketing, specification processes, branding, community development activities, developer advocacy, pooled funding for development, and the like. As I said above I think that the intentions of this working group are well explained in the draft charter.
HTH
--
Mike Milinkovich
Executive Director | Eclipse Foundation AISBL
mike.milinkovich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
@mmilinkov
+1.613.220.3223 (m)
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