This is a platform - its primary business is not end user features but frameworks and infrastructure for others to build cool new products upon
I realize the distinction between "Eclipse Project" and "Eclipse Foundation" is lost on most of the user community
These two statements essentially capture the problem. On the one hand we talk lazily about "Eclipse 4.0" and mean the platform that, oh, happens to be useful in and of itself (i.e., can be seen as a product). On the other the community does not really grok the finer points of Eclipse community structure. So does not necessarily perceive that there would be a difference. Some 500,000+ people have found Eclipse Classic 3.5 interesting enough to download... Whether we want it to be a product or not, many people think it is one.
So if what we are releasing is the platform and not a product then perhaps we should position it as such. Eclipse Tooling Platform 4.0 Presumably we would also have Eclipse Rich Client Platform 4.0
This does not address Brian's big bang theory but perhaps we'll never capture that with 4.* but rather with Indigo or Isaac. The big impact this year will be for people building on the platform.
Jeff
On 2010-04-29, at 4:43 PM, John Arthorne wrote:
I have a hard time with the "not
exciting enough for end users to call it 4.0" argument. This is a
platform - its primary business is not end user features but frameworks
and infrastructure for others to build cool new products upon. The platform
changes coming this summer are about the biggest you can ever expect to
see coming into the platform at this point in its maturity curve. It includes
a substantial rewrite of the UI and a completely new visual presentation
that has been in the works for over two years. It includes EMF and a CSS-based
widget rendering engine bundled into the RCP platform. If this isn't big
enough to call it 4.0, then I suspect we'll be staying on 3.x release numbers
forever. I expect the level of change between the 2010 and 2011 releases
to be substantially smaller so calling next year's release 4.0 would make
even less sense (since it will only contain one year's work rather than
two or more that went into this year's release). I agree with Brian that
the "thunderous release" will come in 2011 once a wider set of
projects have adopted the technology and we have a simultaneous release
based on it. However, that release will be an aggregate of many projects,
and in Eclipse we attach version numbers to individual projects rather
than the simultaneous release as a whole.
To Brian, it may be a subtle distinction
but we are not talking about "Eclipse 4.0". Eclipse is made up
of 50+ projects, of which the platform is only one. So, "Eclipse 4.0"
makes as much sense as "Apache 4.0", and calling it that will
surely disappoint the 80%+ of end users who download something other than
the "Eclipse Classic" download that our single project produces.
I realize the distinction between "Eclipse Project" and "Eclipse
Foundation" is lost on most of the user community but I'm not sure
what we can do about that.
John
I tend to agree with Brian:
To end users, the visible benefits of the 4.0 release that we have
in mind right now, are not really sufficient to call it 4.0.
I'm not sure whether it's too late already to pull the brakes
of our marketing machinery. But in my mind, what we're having
this year is really
1.) An "e4 1.0" release, providing a new and exciting base for
RCP's, which is at an 1.0 maturity level.
2.) An "Eclipse SDK 3.6 Newbase" that is Eclipse 3.6 on top
of
the new base, providing same functionality as 3.6 with
improved visual appearance but also reduced performance
and lack of 3rd party / addon integration.
Native English speaking marketing champions should replace "Newbase"
with a suitable qualifier that implies predicates such as "new,
revamped, reloaded, cool, developer, exciting, ..."
This message also explains why "3.6" and "3.6 Newbase"
are
released just 1 month after each other. In the end, no matter
what we call it, it is what it is...
Thanks,
--
Martin Oberhuber, Senior Member of Technical Staff, Wind River
direct +43.662.457915.85 fax +43.662.457915.6
-----Original Message-----
From: eclipse-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:eclipse-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Brian de Alwis
Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2010 10:54 PM
To: General development mailing list of the Eclipse project.
Subject: Re: [eclipse-dev] Re: [e4-dev] Eclipse Project 4.0 Release
On 28-Apr-2010, at 1:59 PM, Mike Wilson wrote:
> Let's be absolutely clear about this: It is *not* a "preview"
nor is
it a "beta". This is a real release, which should satisfy the
needs of
anyone who was previously running Eclipse "classic".
I'm confused. To me, that implies that this release will be *the*
4.0
SDK, and that the July 2011 release train be shipping with 4.0.1 or
something later. If so, then see my comments below. If this
isn't
going to be *the* 4.0 SDK, or rather if the real 4.0 will be released
later, then I think this *should* be marked as a preview.
On 28-Apr-2010, at 2:18 PM, Jeff McAffer wrote:
> I'm not sure I understand the problems with "beta". [...]
Me neither. The Microsoft's Windows 7 beta was very popularly received.
Apple seeds several rounds of iPhoneOS betas to its developers. It
means that developers release their apps simultaneously, and it becomes
a bigger deal. Look at how Apple is handling iPhoneOS 4.0 - they're
releasing betas now so that developers can be 4.0 ready and show off the
new whizzy features.
My $0.02: I think we should be maximizing the opportunity of "Eclipse
4.0". It shouldn't be used for a developers-only please-test-your-tools
release. e4 is very cool, especially for RCP apps; SFS looks nifty
too.
But let's be honest, most of the other components in Eclipse 4.0 will be
the same in Helios.
To my mind, "Eclipse 4.0" should be a thunderous release with
tons of
improvements, and should be revealed in July 2011. The other projects
will have digested the new release and will demonstrate the stunning
features of Eclipse 4.0. "4.0" should merit a big ecosystem-wide
party.
We should be looking to release e4 1.0. The messaging should be: plugin
developers, move onto e4 R1.0 as this will be the foundation of the
Eclipse 4.0 SDK. If "e4 R1.0" isn't good enough, then this
release
should definitely be "Eclipse 4.0 Preview" or "Early Adopters".
Brian._______________________________________________
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