For some time now the focus of the Eclipse project as a whole has been
to provide a great platform for Eclipse members to build their own
software on top of Eclipse. For example, look at the top of the Callisto
page (www.eclipse.org/callisto), which says:
"We are doing this simultaneous release to support the needs of the
ecosystem members who integrate Eclipse frameworks into their own
software and products. ... Those product producers naturally accept the
ultimate responsibility for their customers' experiences"
There has been a lot of talk in the blogosphere about "tools vs.
platform" which I won't repeat here. But I believe that more attention
needs to be paid to Eclipse tools and Eclipse users. I think there
should be a concerted effort to improve the user experience, for example
to:
- improve the Eclipse out-of-box experience
- create small native installers with commonly used functionality
- create automatic updates that work and that everybody uses
- provide a one-click way to install plug-ins from the web
- provide wizards to help people migrating from other systems
- be a more effective competitor
This has been proposed before. The main arguments against it were:
- "The role of the Foundation itself is not to do the actual work". A
project sponsored/funded by member companies and individuals would
eliminate that objection.
- "Creating distros is a commercial opportunity and the open source
projects should not be doing anything which interferes with that". There
hasn't exactly been a groundswell of commercial distros (in the sense of
repackagers) growing up around Eclipse. Commercial distros can still add
value, for example through third party plug-ins and support.
Thoughts? Sponsors? Job offers? :)
[Note to Bjorn: this isn't a 'Declaration'. Maybe a pre-Declaration, or
Trial Balloon. ;)]
--Ed Burnette
Author, Eclipse IDE Pocket Guide, Eclipse in Action
Web: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette
All views expressed are my own, etc., etc.