----- Original Message ----- > From: "John Arthorne" <john_artho...@ca.ibm.com> > To: "Cross project issues" <cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org> > 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 > > _______________________________________________ > cross-project-issues-dev mailing list > cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org > https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/cross-project-issues-dev > _______________________________________________ cross-project-issues-dev mailing list cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/cross-project-issues-dev
