[ve-dev] FW: [eclipse.org-contributors] Newsletter vol 1 issue 1 - Welco

[Dave Orme <DaveO@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The committer representatives on the Eclipse board have started a new
mailing list to initiate a communication feedback loop between themselves
and the committers and contributors that they represent.

The following is their first newsletter.  If you want to be subscribed to
this mailing list (which is pretty low-volume), directions are in this first
newsletter itself.


Regards,

Dave Orme
VEP Project Lead

-----Original Message-----
From: Bjorn Freeman-Benson [mailto:bjorn@xxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 2004 9:38 AM
To: eclipse.org-contributors@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [eclipse.org-contributors] Newsletter vol 1 issue 1 - Welcome


Welcome

Once again, let me welcome you to the Eclipse Contributors Newsletter
mailing list.  I, Bjorn, am one of the two elected Committer Representatives
to the Board of Directors (John Wiegand is the other).  You are a
contributor to one or more Eclipse open source projects and thus I (and
John) represent you and your interests.  Officially I represent only the
committers, but that seems very class-ist - there are many contributions to
Eclipse projects that are not made by committers - so I expanded the mailing
list to "significant contributors".

Mailing List

This mailing list is a standard Eclipse.org mailing list with one fairly
significant exception: only contributors can join.  The mailing list is
standard in that you can manage your own subscription, read the archives,
etc.  The difference is that because the list is by invitation only, if you
unsubscribe, you cannot resubscribe without help.

This mailing list will only be used a few times per year for me (or your
other Committer Representatives) to communicate with you.  Because the list
is moderated and the membership restricted to significant contributors, no
"I can't use the foo menu item" or "is this a bug?" or "you have to fix this
now" messages will ever appear.

Mailing List Membership

If you know of an Eclipse contributors (committer or otherwise) who is not
on this list and who should be on this list, there please send me email
recommending them for the list.  Please explain in your email why they
should be on the list, e.g., "Ant project committer" or "significant
contribution by filtering incoming bugzilla bugs" or something like that.

Initial Mailing List Membership

I was unable to convince anyone in the former or current Eclipse
organizations to provide this list so that I could communicate
(bi-directionally) with you, the constituency I represent on the board. Thus
I have, through hook and crook and various schemes, assembled an initial
list of email addresses.  This list is by no means complete: there are
definitely people who should be on this list but who have been left off
because I don't know about them.  Please ask around your team, and around
other teams you work with, and pass this email around so that all
contributors get a chance to join (if they want to, of course).  I request
that project, team, and component leads make an extra effort to pass this
email around to their team members.

Report From The Board Meetings

(Most of this you already know.) So far, the Board has: hired an Executive
Director (Mike); approved the hiring an Executive Assistant, a Director of
Ecosystems (Skip), and a Director of Marketing (Ian Skerrett); created the
Web Tools Platform project; opened the Pollinate and Hyades projects for
comments; examined bids for Eclipse.org owned infrastructure; examined the
RFP for EclipseCon 2005; and done various other administrivia.  The Board
has set a number of MBOs for Mike which are mostly about increasing
membership and marketing the Eclipse brand.

I believe that we (the Board) did a poor job of communicating about the
Pollinate project and I resolve to do a better job henceforth.

What's Next?

I am concentrating my Board energies on issues that affect contributors:
* Infrastructure issues including the fact that it is easier 
  to sysadmin a sourceforge project than an Eclipse project,
  that the website doesn't support things like wikis or crons, and
  that the website is out of date in many places and hard to
  use for development tasks
* Monitoring the creation of the EMO (Eclipse Management Organization): 
  the Architecture, Planning, and Requirements Councils.
* Brainstorming on ways to reduce the "contribution cliff" around Eclipse.
  We need multiple levels of contribution and ways to acknowledge and
  reward those levels.

Your Board Representative

As your Board representative, I'd like to hear from you - what can I do on
your behalf on the Eclipse Board?  The next Board meeting is September 15th
and I'm happy to agitate and campaign for those issues that affect you, the
committers and significant contributors.  For example, what MBOs should we
set for Mike to improve the contributor experience?

Regards,
Bjorn Freeman-Benson

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