Hi Tim,
Sorry for taking so long to answer, but Ganymede kept us very busy
and
the work on this stuff was paused.
We are certainly open to discuss where this is heading. Before
commenting on your points I would like to describe once more the key
drivers and intentions for this project.
At the moment we do not have any integration between open source
software from Eclipse and commercial offerings from the larger
Eco-System. This is unfortunate, as it both does not serve our end
users
nor our commercial community. It is however not easy to provide
mechanism for achieving a better integration that meets all of our
constraints: Eclipse can not be in the distribution business (for
legal
and ecosystem reasons) - Eclipse can not distribute commercial
offerings, we don't want to "threaten" our end users with too much
commercialisation, we want to provide a better our of the box
experience
for Eclipse, which means that you need to be able to combine the
things
you need.
The joined releases and EPP with the standard packages have
improved the
situation for the open source side, and we are now planning to
build on
top of that. We have two things on our mind:
- offer the possibility to alter the predefined packages on the fly
with other content from the Ganymede update site based on a simple
to
use web based wizard
- provide a mechanism to forward a users selection of plugins to a
commercial site that is offering additional components
Two brief examples:
You select the Java development package as your starting point and
add
C/C++ to it. Then you either download the p2 installer that
downloads
your selection or you start the p2 installer with webstart.
After having selected the Java development package and added
Datatools
you get to the page where you can start the download, but you see an
"advertisement" that catches your eye for adding MySQL to your
download.
You click the advertisement and get to the vendors site. The vendor
receives your plugin selection and can offer the user to add more
stuff
to his download. The vendor will provide the ultimate download,
hopefully taking advantage of p2.
Does that make the picture clearer?
Jochen
-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Webb [mailto:trwebb@xxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Timothy Webb
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 9:43 PM
To: mitch.sonies@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx; jeff@xxxxxxxxx; Markus Knauer;
Jochen
Krause
Cc: Eclipse Management Organization; epp-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [eclipse.org-committers] Eclipse project announcement
Markus, Jochen, Jeff & Mitch,
Congratulations on stepping forward to create a new work area
focusing
on enhancing the configuration, download and installation
experience for
Eclipse technology users.
As I read this email, I can imagine a new widget available on all
of the
Eclipse project pages that works like a shopping cart ("Add TPTP
Profiling to cart"). When you are done choosing interesting
software,
you can then click a Finish button in the cart summary which would
allow
downloading the software from Eclipse.org directly or hand-off to
any
participating ecosystem partner for further configuration and
download.
Whatever the ultimate solution, I'm excited about us having a
lightweight, scalable add-on to the current Eclipse portal which
provides great value to end users of Eclipse technology and flows
within
the existing site's usage patterns.
Stepping back, I see two areas of work potentially described --
one is
the creation of an exemplary implementation and extensible platform
created to solve the generic provisioning problem of choosing from
lots
of Eclipse software accessible from the web in general. This
first bit
of work is analogous to a multi-site "shopping cart" for Eclipse
software. Secondly, I see a area which is the selection of a
solution
that helps address the specific problems of Eclipse.org which
might have
a different objective and may or may not use the same solution.
While
these areas are related, I see them as distinct problems for which
multiple solutions are possible.
Given the visibility and importance of changes to Eclipse.org, I
would
like to propose we separate out the Eclipse.org technology
solution and
create a new technology project that will focus on delivering a near
term solution for the current download complexities at Eclipse. As
could be inferred from the EPP component proposal, the solution
would
likely leverage a p2-based installer with web integration into the
existing Eclipse portal and provide a way for users to more easily
access software whether by using a direct downloaded installer from
Eclipse.org or choosing to switch over to a partner site as
proposed for
the new EPP component.
We are also excited about becoming actively involved to help with
this
effort.
Congrats!
Tim
On Jun 2, 2008, at 7:44 PM, Anne Jacko wrote:
The Eclipse Packaging Project (EPP) is announcing a new
component -- please see below. Thanks.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------
The dynamic package delivery component provides an extensible
framework for,
and an exemplary implementation of, a service for dynamically
selecting and
downloading/installing installable units.
This component will be extensible and open in that it will
enable multiple
websites to participate in the user selection of installable
units (in
sequential order, i.e., the selections from one site are
forwarded to the
next and so on until the user chooses to download and install
the selection).
The Eclipse Foundation intends to use the exemplary
implementation at
eclipse.org to create a better user and member experience for
downloads.
Markus Knauer
Jochen Krause
Jeff McAffer
Mitch Sonies
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------
Anne Jacko
emo@xxxxxxxxxxx
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