What makes working under nebula different from working on sourceforge?
I think the biggest difference is conventions - in Nebula there sort of are, or were, ways things need to be done so it can appear to be a coherent project; SF is just whatever I want to put together.
Nebula - a little more work, but has potential for greater benefit
SF - zero down, but you're on your own
After you have done to initial stuff (signed committer agreement, ...) there's no limiting thing in nebula as far as I can see but on the other hand you can reach many developers because your control is part of eclipse (and advertised on the website).
Some requirements that at least used to, and maybe still do, exist:
Java 1.4
SWT only (JFace can be included in a separate project)
single directory structure
additionally, I have other widgets that reuse the lower level custom widgets and I experiment with others every now and then - keeping this code together in one location is easier than spreading it out over two.
Would anybody of you ever heard of the cool widgets if they are not part of nebula?
This isn't really fair for me to answer since I started before Nebula, but I have been surprised with places (such as my current job) that use the older AspenCloud datepickers and have never heard of Nebula.
I always thought the purpose for the creation of the Nebula-Project was to provide a central platform for widget creators to have a place people can look for additional widgets.
A central platform; a place for developers to share ideas; to learn from SWT experts how to build better widgets; to engage in usability discussion beyond cloning Microsoft - to me, those would be a huge benefits. I don't have my code back at SF to be spiteful, I do so because I have a very limited amount of time to spend on it and that time I do get I want to be experimenting and learning (code and design).
So, what in your opinion is the advantage of being involved in Nebula? and what would you consider "being involved" to be? I'd guess more than just hosting code here, but what do you hope this project will become?
I think Chris had good ideas starting Nebula, but they didn't quite come through. This shouldn't be surprising, most projects take a turn or two from their initial creation but maybe the vision needs to be looked at again.
If Nebula is just to be a place where people can look for additional widgets, then we could just post a list with links to external projects, like the SWT site has. Personally, I think it should be more than that, though admittedly I don't know how to make it happen...
