[ecf-dev] ECF participation in the annual simultaneous release

[Scott Lewis <slewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Folks,

ECF 3.13.1 was released on-time as part of the Neon Simultaneous 
Release.    ECF has participated in all 11 Simultaneous Releases and  
has been an Eclipse Platform dependency (filetransfer for p2) for > 5 
years.  In that time we have met all SR requirements, met our all our 
commitments to Platform, and never been late.  I think that's an 
incredible accomplishment and record for a small all-volunteer team.

Unfortunately, I think we are at a point where ECF's SR participation 
cannot continue.   As project and Foundation requirements have steadily 
increased, the support for ECF (committer time) has decreased to the 
point where I as project lead cannot sustain SR participation because of 
my limited personal resources.   As well, I now think that ECF gets far 
less from the SR than we put into it, and that inequity also can't 
continue.   If the current resources situation doesn't somehow change 
substantively over the next few months, my intention is to withdraw ECF 
from the next SR.

Note this does not mean that ECF will slow down in our delivery to and 
support of our community.   We have typically averaged > 4 releases per 
year, and I expect that will continue...and perhaps even increase.   Non 
participation in the SR will only mean that I won't have to do all the 
work necessary for meeting the SR release requirements as well as doing 
the actual releases, and so will be able to concentrate on adding value 
in other ways...e.g. supporting the developer/Remote Services user 
community, doing more examples/tutorial/documentation, creating more 
distribution and discovery providers, recruiting, mentoring, and 
supporting ECF committers, and working on additional Eclipse-based 
tooling to make Remote Services/RSA development easier.

I wanted to bring this up early in the cycle so that this could be 
discussed in public via this list.   If you have comments please feel 
free to make them either in response to this posting in public 
(preferred) or to me directly if you deem appropriate.

Thanks,

Scott