| RE: [eclipse-incubator-e4-dev] E4: shouldn't we define the goals first? |
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Mike, Re: “Who is responsible at Eclipse.org for the
"big picture"? The team that is ensuring that the Eclipse SDK + WTP +
TPTP (+ all the other pieces that are required) really is a credible competitor
for NetBeans or IDEA or whatever else is a threat to some parts (or all) of our
community?” That is a good question indeed, but one easily answered: no one
is responsible. And to be clear, it is explicitly not the role of the staff of
the Eclipse Foundation to take that role. We kinda kick things along a little
bit, but the technical leadership must come from the projects. We do not have
the skills or the resources within the EMO to even attempt this, assuming we
had the mandate to do so. Which we do not. The even harder question is: should there be? My impression is that there was an assumption early in the
creation of the Foundation that the Architecture Council would fulfill this role[1].
But that obviously hasn’t worked out. Institutionally, it is well positioned,
but that would assume that its members actually invested time and energy into
making it so. And it also assumes that the “…Eclipse SDK + WTP + TPTP…(etc.)”
projects actually wanted to listen to and act upon guidance from outside their
projects, which historically has not been the case. In my observation, leadership in open source communities occurs
when people decide that they are going to step up and be leaders. If enough
people take on the mantle of community leadership and work to change the status
quo, it will happen. If not the answer to my question above is: apparently not. There is an additional perspective as well, which is that the
Eclipse open source projects should not be focused on the competitors you’ve
listed. (Personally, I think of Visual Studio as the competitor, but that’s
just one opinion.) The fact is that those are products, not community-led open
source projects. If you want to compare apples to apples, you should be looking
to Rational, JBuilder, MyEclipse, etc. etc. when doing those analyses. But
then, again, if our basic platform is not good enough to attract widespread
adoption, the ecosystem suffers if the platform loses market share. This is a complex issue. But one which many of the readers of
this list can impact if they choose to do so. In the absence of any larger change, I suggest you keep doing
what you’re doing. Which is work to creating a community-led project to build
our next-generation Eclipse platform. It’s not like that is in any way a
modest goal! [1] This is not to say that the AC is the only possible solution.
It’s just the current one. But creating new organizational bodies doesn’t
particularly impress me as a solution either. |