As you may have noticed, I've been actively removing inactive
committers from the various modeling projects.
My next task is to terminate inactive projects themselves. The
following projects are targets for immediate termination:
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.pmf
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.tmf.tcs
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.mdt.uml2-tools
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.mdt.sbvr
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.mdt.imm
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.mdt.mst
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.gmt.viatra2
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.gmt.omcw
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.gmt.mofscript
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.gmt.gems
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.gmt
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.gmt.am3
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.emft.temporality
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.emft.servus
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.emft.search
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.emft.mxf
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.emft.mtf
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.emft.jcrm
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.emf.sdo
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.emft.emfatic
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.emft.emf4net
http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=modeling.emft.mint
I'm in discussion with Yves Yang about PMF's future. I'm asking
Epsilon to absorb the code base from Emfatic. The UML2 Tools code
base will be absorbed as a GMF Tooling sample. Does anyone have
concerns or comments about this list? I.e., are there any projects
I should add to or remove from this list?
I'd also like to rethink the need for "umbrella projects." With the
current development processes and infastructure at Eclipse, they no
longer seem to serve a useful purpose. In fact, maintaining an
appropriate committer list for them is proving problematic. In
other words, I'm proposing to eliminate all of the following:
The primary point to consider is that consumers could not care
less about hierarchical project structure. In fact, it's likely
they don't even care about project structure, period. The
consumers are interested in technologies and solutions that they
can apply to their problem domain. Overall, the current website
is worse than useless in terms addressing consumer needs, though
there are some notable project-specific exceptions. Mostly the
website is confusing, out-dated, and disorganized resulting in an
overall bad impression of our excellent technologies. Picking an
example close to home, have a look at the EMF home page. "News"
is from 2009? What does that say about the project? In the end,
that page more of a dirty laundry list than anything useful for
consumers. And it's not the only example of that...
I think we need to start with a fresh website to ensure that we
arrive at something that's usable and easy to maintain so
that we never again end up in the state we're in right now. I'd
like throw out what have now in CVS and start with a new basis
that is maintained in git. The focus will be on the "main"
message on the landing page as well as mechanisms for helping
consumers find relevant technologies and solutions that address
their specific needs. I'll also look at providing some exemplary
project-specific home pages to set the stage. Wayne's approach of
automatically rendering a home page from project metadata is
something I'll look at closely. Wouldn't it be nice to have a
common and consistent way to determine project-specific source
repos, p2 repos, forums, bug tracking, and so on? Of course I'll
provide ample opportunity for others to review the progress and to
get involved.
If any of you have have comments, criticisms, or concerns, I'm
happy to hear about them.
Regards,
Ed