2008 Candidate:
Darin Swanson
Senior Software Engineer
Nominee for Committer Member representative
Platform Ant Team Lead
Platform Debug and JDT Debug Committer
Platform UI Committer
2007 Eclipse Committer Representative
2008 EclipseCon Program Committee
| email: | Darin_Swanson at us.ibm.com |
Vision
I had the honor representing the Eclipse committers on the Eclipse board for 2007. I would ask that you re-elect me to the board for 2008.
My election statement for 2008 is similar to what I detailed for 2007. Below includes a review of what I have achieved as a board representative and where I think I need to continue working to ensure healthy board discussion and action.
And I am always happy to run...even for re-election!One of the key strengths of Eclipse is its community. This community has been established by the Eclipse foundation and has flourished with the input and work of the Eclipse committers. In 2007 as a committer representative, I played a key role in reporting to the board on issues that are important to the Eclipse committers.
We made significant progress in addressing many committer issues at the board level during 2007. In 2008 we need to build on these successes and continue to provide attention to key areas.
Strengthen the committers: Over the past 6 years, I have had the privilege of working with many of the talented committers who are involved with Eclipse. I feel we need to make the committer's tasks easier in order for their continued success and enjoyment in developing Eclipse. I would continue to work to:
Streamline and simplify the Eclipse intellectual property (IP) process. In 2007, I was a member of a board working group specifically tasked with evaluating the current implementation of the IP process. You can see some of the resulting work detailed here. I would continue to cover this area for 2008. Have the Eclipse Management Organization (EMO) organize committer meetings and code camps throughout the year in many different locations. The meetings and code camps I have attended have been warmly received by the community. In the past these required extensive overhead in the planning and preparation for the committers involved. The EMO staff has worked to greatly reduce the overhead for these gatherings. We had great success in 2007 with Eclipse demo camps and I was personally involved in a Portland, Oregon democamp. Help committers to have better awareness and to fully utilize the support from the Eclipse board and Eclipse foundation staff and their committer representatives. In the 2007 session, we created a committer representative newsgroup and committer representative blog. I was active on both in 2007 and would continue relaying board activities for 2008 and strive to achieve even more communication. Promote committer diversity: An Eclipse committer is made, not born. To become a committer, one must first be a contributor. There are numerous people who really do want to help but yet find it difficult to know where to begin. I would continue to work to:
Offer and promote presentations for individuals interested in becoming contributors or committers. This was one of the reasons I proposed a whole track at EclipseCon 2008 specifically for the Eclipse committers and contributors. Be sure to attend this talk. Organize events strictly to promote Eclipse contributions coupled with directed follow-up from established committers. We are going to have a Hackathon at EclipseCon 2008 which will be a great start for this year's set of events. Cross community engagements: Eclipse Members and the ecosystem live in multiple open source communities either exclusively or mixed with commercial software products. As well, the Eclipse ecosystem is large enough to require and benefit from cross project interactions. I believe this will help to increase awareness of each projects challenges and successes. I would continue to work on:
Ease any barriers through meetings and associated code camps so we can learn from each other, both internal and external to Eclipse. Encourage usage of each others offerings. My experience of watching how the Apache Ant project is organized has often allowed me to suggest possible improvements to my team's process. Their model of openness for planning and resolution of conflicts is something I believe Eclipse can continue to learn from. OS Summit Asia is a potential example of how Eclipse and other open source communities have the potential to cross-pollinate. I would continue to ensure that the board understands the value of committer opportunities such as these. Strengthen and grow the existing community: We have a strong vibrant Eclipse community. We need to continue to empower and grow this community. I would continue to work to:
Ensure that we continue to improve the Eclipse web presence and its ease of navigation. Bjorn and company have made great strides here (see this bug and this one for examples) . I know we can keep making great progress here. Streamline the Eclipse contribution process to be easy to understand and execute. For example Bjorn has put up some great cartoons that clarify the process for anyone. These are the type of activities I will encourage the board to continue to task the Eclipse foundation staff with. As well, we all need education in this continually evolving area. This is another reason I proposed and organized the EclipseCon 2008 Committers track with many talks on IP process. I plan to ensure the continuation of this track in future EclipseCons. Foster the openness of all projects and make them more inviting. We have formal procedures in the development process but we need to continue to encourage an attitude of acceptance and openness within all the projects and committers. In 2007, I chose many talks from experts for EclipseCon 2008 to help in this area. I would continue to look for opportunities such as these in my next term. In conclusion, we need to fully utilize the power of the Eclipse ecosystem to enable continued success. I would like to continue to offer my experience and talents to help make this a reality.
About the Candidate
I am one of the original committers on the Eclipse project, working as the Ant Component lead for the Eclipse Platform Project and as a key committer for the Eclipse debug support. I am also working on the Jazz project for IBM.
I was also involved in the development of Eclipse's precursors: VisualAge Micro Edition Java IDE and the Visual Age for Java product. I have presented numerous Eclipse tutorials and talks at several conferences and have helped organize and participated in numerous code camps and a demo camp. I actively field questions in the Eclipse newsgroups and have been nominated as a top committer in previous years.
I am also active in other open source arenas having participated in mailing list discussions, reported bugs and supplied patches to the CruiseControl and Apache Ant projects.
Affiliation
IBM