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Re: [eclipse-dev] Eclipse Project 4.0 Release

The more I think about this, the more I like Dani's ideas about "beta" or "technology preview".

In the first place, it clearly and unambiguously indicates the status is for early adopters. The important thing about this is that the average person does not know (or care) about any of the distinctions we are talking about; they are all much too subtle. If you have a label of "beta", they will clearly get that.

In the second place, though it is intended to be a complete and fully tested release in itself, I would argue that it really is a beta (or technology preview). As John pointed out, there are 50 projects in Eclipse, most of which depend on this technology. Since the Eclipse SDK is not validated by all of the other products that ship on top of it, I think the best that can be argued is that it's beta quality. And the 2010-11 cycle can be spend as the beta test period for this technology so that the 2011 release will not be a beta release (whether you call it 4.0 or 4.1 does not matter I think).

I think one of the things that we do here in Eclipse-land is to try and make our world internally consistent so that we have good names for all of the parts. But sometimes this is at the cost of how we appear externally, and we really need to be better at putting ourselves in the position of the average user. A good example of this is the plugin versions and @since tags. Of course for good reasons they refer to the version of the plugin, but this does not have anything to do with the "version" of the release. But I know that almost every client has no idea that for the CNF 3.5 really means 3.6.


On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 8:02 AM, Schaefer, Doug <Doug.Schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
BTW, I'm of the opinion that this is a big enough issue that the final
decision should be made by the EMO. This impacts all of Eclipse, not
just the SDK.

Just the other day someone asked me if e4 was going to make the CDT
indexer better. That just shows how hungry people are for a better
Eclipse. And thanks to the simultaneous release, people do think of it
as a whole not as pieces. Announcing Eclipse SDK 4.0, people are going
to skip over the "Eclipse SDK" part and hope their CDT indexer is going
to be better. And they're going to be pretty disappointed.

-----Original Message-----
From: eclipse-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:eclipse-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ian Skerrett
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 8:41 AM
To: General development mailing list of the Eclipse project.
Subject: Re: [eclipse-dev] Eclipse Project 4.0 Release

Martin,

I just don't see how a name change will help address the issue people
are raising.  We have a very  smart community that is very knowledgeable
about Eclipse.  Regardless what we call it, this community will see this
as being the 4.0 release of Eclipse.  No amount of marketing can change
this.

This is why I believe we need to focus on who and what people should do
with Eclipse SDK 4.0.  We need to clearly articulate the major use cases
that will be supported in this release.


Sent from my BlackBerry.

-----Original Message-----
From: "Oberhuber, Martin" <Martin.Oberhuber@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 12:27:10
To: General development mailing list of the Eclipse
project.<eclipse-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: [eclipse-dev] Eclipse Project 4.0 Release

Hi Ian,

 > I just don't see how introducing a new name helps
 > clarify the situation.

Well I'm not a marketing expert, but in API Design there is a guideline
which says "Names Matter". If I find myself writing pages of docs to
explain what something is or is not, there's a good indication that I've
not chosen the best name.

We seem to agree that this is all about setting expectations.
We've been considering changes of version number and addition of
qualifiers - why not also consider changing the name?

There is agreement that this is all about setting expectations, and that
much of the audience won't read any explanations we give - so the name
and the version do have a high impact.

 > This IS the next major release of the Eclipse SDK.
 > There is no escaping the fact.

Well historically that's right of course. But we also need to consider
(1) that the role of the Eclipse SDK has changed since its inception -
just consider the EPP packages, release train and stack of technology on
top of the Platform -, and (2) that the label "SDK" is ambiguous in the
context of EclipseRT at least (is it tools+source+docs, or
runtime+source+docs, or runtime+tools...). So I do think
there's a good case for re-considering the name.

As John has very clearly pointed out, the deliverables of the Eclipse
Project today are a Platform + the essential tools (JDT,PDE) to program
that Platform. It's_not_ a product and not even an IDE (we want the IDE
space to be taken by the EPP packages). Perhaps just adding the
qualifier "Platform" to the release name helps clarifying this.

 > lot of people use the Eclipse SDK to build more than tools.

I think that "Tooling Platform" was meant to describe that it contains
Tools to build anything ... And not anything to build tools. But I can
see how the name could trigger an association like yours, so perhaps we
should just continue looking for names. And be open enough to consider
any change in (name + version + qualifiers). Here's my personal
favorites so far:

 - Eclipse Tooling Platform 4.0
 - Eclipse Platform SDK 4.0
 - Eclipse SDK 4.0 Developer Release
 - e4 1.0 SDK

I don't buy into "Early Adopter Release" or "Beta" because like McQ I do
consider this as a complete release -- the difference to the 3.6 release
is really in Scope (a Platform without the rest of the stack) and not in
quality.

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 Ian Skerrett
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 1:12 AM
To: General development mailing list of the Eclipse project.
Subject: Re: [eclipse-dev] Eclipse Project 4.0 Release

I just don't see how introducing a new name helps clarify the situation.
This IS the next major release of the Eclipse SDK.  There is no escaping
the fact.  I agree we need to set expectations but trying to change the
name will just confuse the situationn IMHO.

Btw, I would also point out that a lot of people use the Eclipse SDK to
build more than tools.




Sent from my BlackBerry.

-----Original Message-----
From: "Oberhuber, Martin" <Martin.Oberhuber@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:14:26
To: General development mailing list of the Eclipse
project.<eclipse-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: [eclipse-dev] Eclipse Project 4.0 Release

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