[eclipse.org-membership-at-large] News and views from your Eclipse Board

["Krause, Jochen" <jkrause@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Eclipse Add-in Providers,
 
The first half of our term as elected Add-in provider reps is almost
over, and we would like to take the chance and look back at what has
been going on as well as a look at what is ahead. Although we feel that
we have been actively promoting the interest of the Add-in provider
community at the board and beyond, we think that we can improve our
communication to you - to get your views and to enable you to provide
feedback. As a first step towards improving this, let's talk about a few
things that are important to us and maybe as well to you.
 
This summer the board had some pretty productive meetings and a couple
of decisions have been taken and will be implemented by the EMO,
naturally with the help of the eco system:
 
Better promote the ecosystem:

 - increase the visibility of Eclipse based products and technologies on
eclipse.org
 - allow corporate logos to be placed on Eclipse project pages (for
contributors)
 
-> Eclipse has a strong ecosystem with many open source and commercial
offerings. We strive
   to make this more obvious (e.g. by listing offerings that are built
on the just displayed
   project technology). Another opportunity is championing the
integration of the Eclipse
   Plugin Central (EPIC) portal into the Eclipse Foundation.
 

Improving Ease of use:

 - A "User Interface Architecture Working Group" is being formed to
address usability
 - conformance with UI Guidelines will be an exit criteria for release
reviews
 
-> this shall raise the sensitivity of projects towards adhering to UI
guidelines 
   (avoid "do it my way")
 

Improving the out of Box Experience:

 - a packaging project has been proposed to make it easier for
developers to download the
   functionality that they are interested in
 
-> the user community is an important asset for Eclipse and its
ecosystem - this measure
   shall help to make it easier for developers to get started with
Eclipse
 

Web Site:

 - the website has until now only been targeted to projects and plug-in
developers. End
   users will be added to the target audience and resources will be
invested in make the
   website easier to use and navigate.
 - the EMO will work to ensure that all projects websites conform to a
set of common rules
   (project status, releases, downloads, plans, ...)
 
-> the eclipse website is currently not a very welcoming place to new
users of Eclipse
   technology. The future website is intended to be more end user
friendly.
 

Another important thing that has been presented to the board is that the
EMO is working on refining the Eclipse development process. Please keep
in mind that the dev. process is a very important ingredient for
ensuring the predictability of Eclipse. If you have observations about
the current dev. process that you would like to share, or if you would
like to contribute to improve the dev. process description please let us
know.
 
At the Dallas membership meeting and in the regular telephone
conferences that we plan to establish we would like to learn more about
your information and communication needs and discuss some ideas that we
hope to improve the return for being part of the eclipse ecosystem.
 

Best Regards,
 
Your Add-in Provider representatives
 
Jochen Krause   Howard Lewis   Mike Tayler   Todd Williams
 
Jochen Krause
INNOOPRACT Informationssysteme GmbH
Managing Director
Phone: +49 721 966 23 60
mailto:jkrause@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.innoopract.com 
 
Howard Lewis
SlickEdit
Advisor & Board Member
Phone: 919-473-0102
mailto:hlewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.slickedit.com
 
Mike Taylor
President and CEO
Instantiations, Inc
Phone: 503-598-4911
mailto:mike_taylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
http://www.instantiations.com


Todd Williams
VP - Technology
Genuitec, LLC
Phone: 972-691-5717
mailto:todd@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.genuitec.com