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Re: [nebula-dev] NatTable EPP
Hi Edwin et al,

What I did, was to describe the possible threats of splintering up Nebula. I did not make any negative characterization of NatTable.  In fact, I think you have a great project. I mentioned that several times. 

You coming to Nebula gives us an excellent opportunity to think about how we want to be organized. 

Nebula as a whole has been dormant for a while and we are just getting our stuff together again. So, what we want and what has been worked on by Thomas and Nicolas and others is to make an official released project. From Tom's document:

"The intenion of the restructuring is that Nebula releases those supplementary components in a 1.0 release to foster adoption in commercial and opensource projects."

So this means that we want to do what you are doing. We want to be commercial quality, stable and trustworthy and to build the community. If NatTable has such high ambitions, let's use that energy to propel the complete Nebula project forward. You coming to Nebula-proper will have a positive effect on the quality of all widgets. I believe we can be stronger together.

I apologize if I came across offensive. However, I did mean to stir the pot. ;)

Please read my follow-up mail on the release schedule.

Best Regards,

Wim



On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 1:11 AM, Edwin Park <esp@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Okay, here are my _true_ objections : when somebody offers a new widget, they are all excited and have major plans for everlasting support. The reality is that support declines with time and that eventually there is a widget that functions properly but is pretty much in maintenance mode, if even that.

This means that the current excited ones (all you who are reading this) have to take on the burden of the maintenance of that widget. Mik Kersten once told me, it is like giving somebody a puppy, all is cute and cuddly in the beginning but the beast gets bugs and must be taken care of. 

Hmm. Sounds like you've been burned before. I don't think it's fair to characterize NatTable this way, however. I don't know what's going to happen in the future, but NatTable currently has an active developer and user community, and we're certainly not planning on dumping the code on you and fleeing. Rather, we're looking at coming to Eclipse as a way for us to grow.
 
Now that we open up the possibility to start a subproject this sounds appealing to people. After all,  having your own sub-project sounds better then just be one-of-the-widgets, right? The reality probably is that it is just a major additional overhead and time waster. 

I really don't see it this way. I think you need to have an organization that makes sense for the situation you're in now. And right now I think that given the size and complexity of the NatTable code and its community it makes more sense to treat it as an independent subproject. Also, I don't think you should worry about the additional overhead. That would be my problem, not yours. And again, I'm not planning on going anywhere.

I'm not pushing for a NatTable subproject just because I think a subproject 'sounds better'. I'm doing it because I think it makes sense. This has a lot to do with the way Nebula is organized right now. My understanding of the situation is if we were to join Nebula proper as it is now, we would not be able to release independently. If I'm mistaken about this or if you can show me how we'd be able to do this in the context of the main Nebula project, I'd be happy to discuss. But if this is indeed the situation it is a huge problem for us in terms of being able to support our community.

Edwin


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