Re: [eclipse.org-planning-council] Callisto call minutes posted

[Bjorn Freeman-Benson <bjorn.freeman-benson@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Was the Proposal for Member Company Callisto Downloads discussed at all on the call yesterday?  I did manage to join the call, but I was quite late.

It was. We discussed it after the Mega Release Review date (May 26th) and before the Great Bugs Contest. (see the minutes http://www.eclipse.org/projects/callisto.php?key=2006.04.19)

I was a little surprised by the proposal.  While we had talked about an all-in-one callisto download before, I don't recall having heard anything about this approach.  So, I'm curious where the idea came from?

A number of Foundation staff and member companies noodled the idea up. I honestly don't remember everyone who contributed to the idea - if you hate the idea, blame me - if you like it, I'm sure everyone who contributed will step forward to accept some of the glory. It's a new idea to the Planning Council/Callisto team.

It's an interesting idea.  I can definitely see the potential for promoting members' Callisto-based offerings.  My concern, however, is that people may find it confusing.  Aren't  people likely to look for an "official" Callisto package?  Will they realize that they can get *just* Callisto via any of these company's offerings?  Might they wonder if they'll get a different Callisto bundle depending on the offering they choose?

People probably are going to look for an official Callisto package BUT we don't have one. And nobody has the time to create one - each of the projects is busy putting together and testing their Callisto contribution. So the idea behind the proposal was to convince someone else to do the work of packaging up a Callisto distro (a zip, an installer, whatever). The incentive for a company doing so is the co-marketing advantage of being included on the download page plus the cachet of being known as helping out the Eclipse community.

We would try to make the wording on the eclipse.org download page and the eclipse-plug-in-central download page as clear as possible about why you would want to go to the HP (for example) site to download an "official" Callisto bundle and how the bits are the same bits no matter where you go, but I suspect there will always be people who are confused. It's sort of mirrors-plus-plus: at a mirror, the bits are all the same whereas here the installed bits will be the same even if the installer might not be.

I'll try to update the proposal to make this more clear,
Bjorn