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[News.eclipse.foundation] Re: E4 / SWT 4.0 
Hi Eric,

I'm just jumping in here, not really knowing the context of this, but I want to make a couple of comments to what you say:

1) The main problem is there are not enough people working on the code to get things done. Much of the work is done by the committers, but also quite a bit is contributed. But the sum total of that is far less than what we need to clean out the bug backlog and satisfy all of the requests of the community.

*We need more people doing the work*; it really does not matter if they are committers or if they are contributors.

I think however we need to get a *lot* better at encouraging contributions and contributors. We need more wiki pages and help and communication to help people contribute. We need infrastructure for this so that all projects can have a lot of materials and support to make it easy to document how to contribute, find contributors, recognize contributions and contributors, and do a better job of identifying work where we need help. Right now it's very uneven between projects because there is little in the way of common support for encouraging contributions.

2) I also think, like any other open source (or many internal companies), it's largely a matter of relationships. You can get what you want by contributing code certainly; and you can also get what you want by working with committers and other contributors and having them make things a priority. If you are interested in a particular area, then get to know the developers and that's how you will influence things. I'm not saying this is right, it's just how things seem to work (at least in some areas).

The problem here is this is entirely a volunteer effort, and yes there are full time committers, but their company is effectively volunteering their time. Personally, I don't want to see any more elaborate mechanisms for prioritizing things or having product mangement, etc because that will just add more process overhead.

Eric Rizzo wrote:
Note: I've copied this thread over to eclipse.foundation because I think it has broader scope than just SWT.
(my own comments below)

Ed Merks wrote:
2) the vision for the next releases 
There will still be 3.x releases.  The plans for those aren't out
yet.  Without community involvement, those plans will most likely be
driven by the  priorities of choice for the people making the plans.

There's been a lot I've wanted to comment on in this thread, but this above is the crux of the problem: as a community member (as opposed to a committer), it is practically impossible to be "involved" in the planning beyond just entering, commenting on, and voting for Bugilla reports. That is the only tool we really have, and yet (as Laurent has pointed out and others have surely noticed) many, many issues in Bugzilla are either rejected from the outset (some with, and some without, cause) or simply wither on the vine from lack of attention. This includes both bugs and enhancements. Ed, your particular example of EMF defects, while admirable, is not the standard across the other top-level projects; EMF is an anomaly, in my experience, in this area.

So, if our only tool to be involved in planning is a victim of the priorities of those doing the planning, how are we to "get involved" in the planning when our priorities differ from the decision makers.
The barrier to entry is indeed way to high and, again as Laurent has been saying, most of us do not work for a company that is willing to pay us to put in the amount of time it actually takes to get respected status and hold the ear of the project teams. Volunteer time for someone who spends his working hours neck-high in Eclipse is *significantly* easier than for someone who only uses Eclipse projects most of the time and want to try to contribute in his spare time. I think that fact is often overlooked by the existing contributors. The barrier to entry and learning curves are very, very high; those of you whose employment has paid that cost have a big advantage over those who have to shoulder it on their own.

Eclipse committers can say all they want that it is possible for an outsider to join the team with enough contribution, but that is like saying it is possible for "anyone" to become president (or prime minister) - yes, its technically possible but it is not practical. Again, the barrier to entry is just so high. Now, before someone throws a straw man into the discussion, let me be clear that of course I am not advocating opening the doors and letting anyone and everyone commit code. But for the comitter to repeatedly say "get involved" in response to interrogation or critic, well that just trivializes what that really takes to get involved beyond just contributing ideas and bug reports. To be honest, it is a little insulting to those of us who *do* contribute a lot that is not in the form of code. Trust me, I've experienced the glass wall many times, despite my prominent position in the community. The bottom line: there is a bit of a perceived glass wall between the community and the project teams, and until that is recognized by the teams (instead of denying or defending it without reflecting upon it) there will continue to be this "us and them" mentality from this side of that wall.
Look, I don't think anyone here is being malicious or ungrateful or anything like that - I think we are just trying to be honest.
Most of us in the community greatly respect the work that the Eclipse project teams do and greatly appreciate the products that they produce. But there *are* problems in the system and if we can't have open, honest discussion about them, we might as well all go somewhere else because without that openness and honesty, Eclipse will be doomed to failure.

Eric