Thursday, August 28, 2008

On Good Intentions...

They say that the road to you-know-where is paved with good intentions. Unfortunately, good intentions aren't enough to sustain a project at Eclipse. As I've said before, to be successful, an Eclipse project must adequately address its three communities (contributors/committers, users, and adopters). This takes work.

We've had to make some difficult decisions in the Modeling project lately, to deal with some projects/components that didn't quite pan out as they were originally intended. To be clear, Eclipse is not a hosting facility (i.e. dumping ground). It's an ecosystem where like-minded individuals can work together to build extensible frameworks and exemplary tools.

In the Modeling project, we like to think of it being relatively easy to create a project, but hard to keep one. We don't want to stifle innovation, but at the same time we hold our projects to the same high standards that Eclipse had gained a reputation for. The mechanism for creating Modeling projects may change a little now that the new Eclipse development process has been approved, but our attitude will remain the same.

The good news is that, while some projects fade away, new projects are always on the horizon. The Papyrus component of MDT was recently approved for creation (stay tuned for the announcement), and a couple more proposals for new MDT subprojects are in the works. If you're interested in being part of the excitement, let me know!

1 comment:

Ed Merks said...

Kenn, I always wondered where that road went!