Re: [cross-project-issues-dev] Future of Eclipse IDE

[Aleksandar Kurtakov <akurtako@xxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Arthorne" <John_Arthorne@xxxxxxxxxx>
> To: "Cross project issues" <cross-project-issues-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2013 11:17:20 PM
> Subject: Re: [cross-project-issues-dev] Future of Eclipse IDE
> 
> Gunnar Wagenknecht wrote on 07/18/2013 05:01:50 AM:
> 
> > Too much of the platform is still
> > dominated and controlled too strictly by that one single company.
> > Contributions got turned away because of the "lack of resources"
> > argument and associated maintenance costs long term. To some point
> > those arguments aren't completely invalid. I'm at a point of being
> > resigned when it comes to contributing to the platform.
> 
> This statement worries me more than everything else that has been written in
> this thread. It makes sense that there are very few committers who are
> focused on the requirements of the direct Eclipse user base. There are few
> people with the motivation to even gather feedback on the pain points of
> using a free tool, let alone spending significant time addressing them. I
> believe the main focus for most current committers is:
> 
> 1) Stuff *they* (or their employer) want to focus on
> 2) Enabling other contributors to help *them* fix the problems they want to
> see fixed
> 
> I think this is one of Doug's key points, that working to enable more
> contributors is the only scalable solution. Imagine someone spent the time
> to gather a list of the "top 5" most pressing problems/enhancement requests.
> Maybe the current committers can take this list and fix 1 or 2 of them
> between their other priorities. Well, next year there will be a new list,
> and more requests, and still no more people to work on them. It will not
> result in a dramatic transformation of the perception or trajectory of
> Eclipse as an IDE.
> 
> However Gunnar's comment says we are even failing on enabling contributors,
> which vexes me. I actually thought we had made improvements on that in the
> past couple of years. The Foundation and many committers have been working
> to reduce barriers to contribution in any way possible. Switching to Git,
> moving the build to Maven/Tycho, adopting Gerrit, and holding dedicated
> patch review days are a few of the things committers have been doing. From
> the statistics it looks like we are even starting to see results on this.
> Ohloh metrics have shown a stable or even slight upwards trend in the number
> of Platform contributors in the past couple of years [1]. JDT core and SWT,
> historically the two components with the toughest standards for accepting
> committers, have both seen committers from new companies this year. Platform
> UI, which is in a position to address many of the preference problems
> described here, has THIRTY NINE committers. I don't doubt there are still
> barriers, but it looks like at least some people are managing to overcome
> them and bring their contributions into the platform.
> 
> Personally most the time I used to spend directly fixing user reported
> problems, I now spend reviewing patches and trying to enable others to
> contribute fixes instead. If successful, this has a multiplier effect that
> grows the base of people capable of contributing and is, I think, the best
> use of the limited committer resources we have available. So don't tell me
> what you want to see fixed. Tell me how I can help you to fix them.

Don't take it personal. Personally I am more than thankful to you for all the support for guiding us and helping to push our patches in. And I would even say that without your support many of the patches my team created would have still be pending in bugzilla if you haven't stepped in. Things improved a lot in last year but the pace would need to be kept and even speed it up before it becomes visible to people not directly contributing to some project. 

Alex


> 
> John
> 
> 
> [1] https://www.ohloh.net/p/eclipse/factoids#FactoidTeamSizeVeryLarge
> 
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