[technology-pmc] Works with dependency and limitations

[Christian Pontesegger <christian.pontesegger@xxxxxx>]

Hi PMCs,

I have a question regarding a works-with dependency which we could not 
clarify via CQ:

https://dev.eclipse.org/ipzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11012

Sharon asked me to seek for PMC advice, so this is why I bring this 
topic up.



EASE is a scripting framework that allows to add arbitrary script 
engines to Eclipse. Therefore we need
a) script interpreters (eg Rhino, Jython, Groovy, ...)
b) Adapters that connect the external engine to EASE

Currently we are hosting engines and adapters at Github due to licensing 
issues (eg with Jython) and declare a works-with dependency.

Now while our framework evolves adapters need to be changed from time to 
time. As their code is hosted external we sometimes miss that which ends 
up in incompatibilities. Further we need to maintain external update 
sites, bugtracker, ... This is somehow annoying and frustrating for our 
users. Therefore I would like to move the adapters (b) to eclipse.org 
and simply leave the interpreters (a) on github.

Implications are that adapters declare plug-in dependencies to 
interpreters (eg. org.jython plugin) and the build would also need 
org.jython in its target platform.

Further I would like our EASE p2 site to declare a reference to the 
external github p2 repo, so users would not need to know about the 
external p2 site.

To make this clear: org.jython would not be hosted at eclipse.org but 
users and most developers would not need to care about this any longer.


Now for my question: are we allowed to do this? If yes, would a 
works-with dependency be sufficient? If not: how close could we get 
without violating eclipse policies?

thanks
Christian