[wtp-proposal] May 9 Summary of Web Tools Project Proposal

["Bjorn Freeman-Benson" <bjorn@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(As part of the membership-at-large comment process, I will be summarizing
the discussions and feedback at the end of each week: April 30, May 7, May
14, May 21, and May 27. This is the second of those summaries. I invite you
to correct any errors I have made.)

There were three major discussion areas this week:
(1) Offers of contributions
(2) Critiques about how the proposal has not made it clear how to contribute
(3) Discussion about project goals

Ed Burnette <ed.burnette@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> asked a question about the WTP
goal of "vendor ecosystem vs. commoditization". Arthur Ryman
<ryman@xxxxxxxxxx> replied but was politely careful not to say what I'm
about to say.

Eclipse's goal is "to advance the creation, evolution, promotion, and
support of the Eclipse Platform and to cultivate both an open source
community and an ecosystem of complementary products, capabilities, and
services". Eclipse is not just about free software. Note that these key
phrases:
(1) "an open source community" - an open source community is one in which
all members of that community are contributing to the community's success;
there are many ways to contribute; for example, Mr. Burnette runs the
excellent eclipsepowered blog - that is a contribution to the community; I
am shepherding the WTP Proposal - that is a contribution; Mr. Swanson codes
much of the Ant support - that is a contribution; Mr. Megert entered
bug#50000 - that is a contribution; Mr. Li wrote an article about image
viewers - that is a contribution; Mr. Clayberg and Mr. Rubel wrote a book
about plug-ins - that is a contribution; etc, etc. Lots of people are making
contributions to the community.
(2) "and an ecosystem" - Eclipse acknowledges what Arthur stated "These two
communities [developer and vendor] form a tightly linked ecosystem." We
cannot have one without the other. If Eclipse's goal were to give everything
away for free, Eclipse would not have the excellent contributions of
companies like IBM, HP, SAP, QNX, and many others. Hence the statement that
a goal of the WTP project will be to "support a vital application
development market, rather than to commoditize viable commercial spaces".
Everyone involved acknowledges that (as Arthur said) "all technologies
become commoditized over time" - that's a given - but WTP does not have an
immediate goal to replace all of, e.g., WSAD with free software.
(3) "complementary products, capabilities, and services" - Eclipse is not
about replacing VS .NET or IntelliJ or whatever with free software; rather
Eclipse is about the best possible set of tools for developing software.
Some of those tools will be open source; other tools will be commercial
software; collectively, this set of tools will be the best - that's what
Eclipse is about.

I hope I have not stepped over the boundaries of my shepherding role, but I
believe that it is important to the WTP project that we recognize that:
(a) WTP is not about IBM giving away its software for free; in fact, IBM is
a minority player in the WTP Proposal
(b) WTP will only be successful if it has a large and diverse group of
contributors
(c) WTP will only be successful if it enables vendors to build great tools
for developers
(d) WTP will only be successful if it is seen by vendors as enhancing their
sales rather than cannibalizing them.
As I read the WTP Proposal, I see all of this: I see excellent frameworks
for the vendors to build on for the paying customers, and I see excellent
exemplar tools for the free software users. I see WTP as a powerful example
of the Eclipse philosophy of cultivating both a community and an ecosystem.
I hope you do to and I hope that you will contribute.

(items new this week are marked with a *)

Offers of contributions:
* interested in contributing to JST project; server tooling and j2ee module
tools - Lomboz committer Gorkem Ercan <gercan@REMOVE_ME.acm.org>
* Rich Internet Application, e.g., an SVG widget framework plug-in
(http://www.openvue.net/projects.php) - Xinjie ZHANG <xjzhang78@xxxxxxxxxxx>
* interested in contributing - Joss Wright <joss.wright@xxxxxxxxxx>
* Kinzan offers their Visual JSP editor - James O'Leonard
<joleonard@xxxxxxxxxx>

Features requested:
- hibernate - Haris Peco <snpe@xxxxxxxxxx>
- JSF - Haris Peco <snpe@xxxxxxxxxx>
- JSP - Ivar Vasara <ivasara-NOSPAM-@xxxxxx>
- portlets - Mohamed ZERGAOUI <mozer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- spring - Haris Peco <snpe@xxxxxxxxxx>
- xdoclet - redmark <redpowerhot@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Critiques:

* "WTP lacks information about how individuals can contribute" - Gorkem
Ercan <gercan@REMOVE_ME.acm.org>
* "you seem to be making it less than easy to actually make a commitment to
this project" - Joss Wright <joss.wright@xxxxxxxxxx>
- "Spending a bunch of time making a perfect solution doesn't make sense
to me; don't want a new set of frameworks when a good starting point
exists" - Michael Dickson <mike.dickson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Discussion questions:
* doclets vs. 1.5 metadata; how to coordinate; technology project or JSR
annotations - productive contributions to the discussion by: Naci Dai
<naci.dai@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Thomas Hallgren <thomas.hallgren@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Statements of scoping:
- "The scope of web tools is huge and we have chosen to start with
something well identified" - Christophe Ney <christophe.ney@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- "Do not commit to xdoclet at this point" - Thomas Hallgren
<thomas.hallgren@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- "We didn't explicitly list all the JSRs" - Arthur Ryman <ryman@xxxxxxxxxx>

Summarized by:
WTP Proposal Shepherd (Bjorn Freeman-Benson)