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[ptp-dev] Re: Technology PMC review of PTP project
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Cliff,
Thanks for your comments.
On Mar 6, 2006, at 12:50 PM, Cliff Schmidt wrote:
Greg,
As a representative of the Technology PMC, I'd like to offer some
feedback on the PTP project to you (as the project lead) and to all
the other PTP committers. I'm also volunteering to be your PMC
contact and project mentor.
Overall, we believe that the project is on the right track. User
questions seem to be getting answered, bugs are making their way
into Bugzilla (although not as actively recently), and there
appears to be a healthy collaboration on the mailing lists.
The community size still appears to be small, but that may be
related to the pre-1.0 maturity and the domain of the project (not
having as broad of a potential audience as more common developer
tools). However, we have a few thoughts on some actions that might
help to grow the strength of the PTP community:
The community size will stay small until we can get the message out
and convince people to switch to using Eclipse. However, they're not
going to do that until we can show them something better than what
they already have. There is a strong resistance to moving to Eclipse
just for the benefits you get from Eclipse. The people I talk to
want something more than that. So, while we're working on getting the
first release out, it's highly unlikely we'll get more contributers.
Until then, most of our resources will be in development.
Also, I'd like you to understand that this project is not really like
other Eclipse projects. While there is some commercial interest, most
parallel computing is done in government funded labs or academia.
Getting people in this community interested in contributing is not a
matter of establishing a business case. It requires seeking
additional funding for new projects, which can be a very slow process.
* Make it easy for users to get started either through tools (an
installer) or through detailed checklists and instructions. I've
noticed that your project has made some improvements in this area
in the last couple weeks. Great job -- keep it up!
I wish it were it that easy, and we were just a pure Java plugin that
people could download into Eclipse. However, the nature of parallel
computers means this will never be possible. We are trying to
establish better processes, but the bottom line is that it will never
be as easy as a java plugin. Now that we've actually got something
for people to try out, we'll have an opportunity to get feedback and
suggestions on improving the installation process.
* As has been done in the last couple weeks, continue to make sure
documents linked from the web site are relatively up-to-date. For
instance, make sure the Release Plan, Design Document, and Work
Tasks reflect where the project is today.
* Good job with planning a demo and talk at EclipseCon -- make sure
attendees know how easy it is for them to get involved and help
make the project better.
* Good job posting the minutes to the conference calls; however,
you could do a better job with letting people know in advance the
time/date and call-in info for the meeting. Consider making sure a
notice is sent to the newsgroup and mailing list earlier than the
day of/before the meeting. You might also even consider posting
the next meeting time/date on the site's home page.
Teleconferences can be very useful, but they can also inadvertently
exclude interested potential contributors if it's not obvious that
everyone is invited to attend and provided enough notice to do so.
The time and date of the meetings is already on the planning meetings
page. Are you suggesting something different? I try and put
information up about the meetings as early as possible, but lately
I've been busy with other matters. I will try to be more diligent.
* Your contributors page (http://www.eclipse.org/ptp/
contributors.html) has a long list of "Supporters". I assume this
list was put together when the project was proposed. Since the
project is now well underway, you might consider getting back in
touch with some of the organizations to see if they are now
interested in getting involved to any extent.
It has always been my plan, once we have something for people to try.
Greg
