We're out of the gate with the Eclipse Board of Directors election and I'm running to be a Committer Representative. You can check out myself and the other candidates and our platforms over at the Eclipse election site, http://www.eclipse.org/org/elections/nominees.php.
My platform is simple. My biggest concern as I've documented on my blog a number of times over the years is how to get more contributions into Eclipse projects. We often complain of being starved for resources. Even this week on the cdt-dev list, we're struggling to get our new debug framework into good enough shape that it will attract further contributions. The community is coming together and rising to the challenge, but it would be great if it was easier to get more people involved. The more contributions you get the more everyone benefits.
To me so much of the answer lies in ways to simplify the path for individual contributors to get code changes upstream into the Eclipse repositories. Many are unable to get employer approvals to get committer status, but we should still be able to leverage their talent. Distributed source control is a great start, allowing downstream developers to work on their features, allowing committers to see and review their work and then push that work upstream, all while meeting the Eclipse IP processes that are so valuable to our membership. We need to make sure we continue the work to complete that infrastructure, and that the Foundation staff have the necessary resources to make it happen, and that we make the necessary changes to the Eclipse processes to make it simple.
I'll blog about other ideas over the upcoming days, and hopefully earn your trust enough to vote for me. As Ed put it, my approach to this blog tends to be edgy. But that's a facade I put on it to drive my ideas home. If you take a look at my work on the CDT, you'll see I try hard to be pragmatic. I present my ideas and always consider not only the ideas of others, but try to understand their needs as well to make sure we have a consensus from which we can all benefit. It's a lot of work there, and I expect it to be an even bigger challenge on the board. But after 7 years of active involvement in the Eclipse community, I feel I'm ready.
I believe that most of what's needed to help more people get involved can be done without any involvement at the board level; the board does not and should not micro manage the operations of the EMO. In addition, I believe that a welcoming attitude tops the best technology in the world. In the modeling project, the creation of incubators has proven effective for welcoming unproven new people along with their technology.
ReplyDeleteThe reaction we got from the EMO when asking for distributed version control was that there wasn't enough resources to implement it. I believe distributed version control is critical to the future growth of Eclipse. The board should be involved in something that important to make sure the right decisions and trade-offs are being made.
ReplyDeleteDoug, you are right that the initial reaction from Eclipse Foundation staff to Git was not very positive. And it did take board-level initiative over the past year to get to the point where we are now. We're on a good path though, and Denis is already pretty bleeding edge with regards to Git.
ReplyDeleteVery cool. Thanks, Boris. The progress is amazing and I'm glad the board was able to effectively push it to happen. It gives me the warm fuzzies that we'll actually be able to make change happen there and running for the board is a good thing to do.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ed a welcoming attitude (of the individual community members) tops the best technology (and organizational support) in the world.
ReplyDeleteI think the Eclipse community is outstanding in the sense that the individuals are very helpful and welcoming and that this makes a difference to the people.
Doug,
ReplyDeleteThe reasons for the original push-back on git were certainly more nuanced than you state here. I would refer you to https://bugs.eclipse.org/257706#c63
Once those issues started to be resolved, the EMO was all over moving. But the hard part is yet to come. Will EGit be good enough in Helios for the community to switch to? Will the projects _really_ be willing to allow us to shut CVS off? 'Cause I am still of the opinion that having three separate SCM systems would be (a) embarrassing and (b) a barrier to entry for the entire community. This summer and fall will be gut-check time for lots of people on this topic.
It should be fun :-)
I don't think having three is either embarrassing or a barrier. Most hosting sites have choice and that's seen as a good thing. And if you have to shut off one, you'll probably find an easier time of shutting off SVN. Apparently the svn-git tools are pretty good (Wind River is using them in house as a local git host for the Eclipse SVN repo for TCF).
ReplyDelete