Re: [ide-dev] ide-dev Digest, Vol 9, Issue 6

[Denys Digtiar <duemir@xxxxxxxxx>]

I am sorry for the emotional response, but when a year ago I tried to contribute to JDT Core, which I consider to be essential to Eclipse IDE, I encountered a website which looks like it is from 90s, only partially helpful, sometimes outdated Wiki, complicated setup process, Maven build that didn't work. On top of that I almost stabbed my eyes when I saw the source code, which looked like one huge violation of Bloch's "Effective Java". I didn't see how any major changes can come from inside (e.g. current commiters), because to me from the outside it looked like a much smaller team of JDT developers is trying to chase the much bigger Oracle java tools teams and OpenJDK community in a race of adding new java language features to java compiler, but JDT team in addition has to write a UI for them. Plus, after reading the comments on this defect https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=303519, I did't see how any major changes can come from outside. I felt helpless, so I gave up.

On the other hand, I didn't have any major hurdles with EGit/JGit projects, and code looked nice and my minor fix was easy to make and it was accepted. So eclipse projects can be done right.

Yeah, certificate is nice, it gives the sense of acknowledgement, but to the people who are willing to contribute to JDT it should be something more like a monument. I understand it is not constructive, but I could not help myself.

On 1 June 2014 02:00, <ide-dev-request@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Date: Sat, 31 May 2014 08:19:05 +0200
From: Szymon Ptaszkiewicz <szymon.ptaszkiewicz@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: Discussions about the IDE <ide-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [ide-dev] How to encourage contributions and what kind     of
        contributions?
Message-ID:
        <OF5304B282.58664F32-ONC1257CE9.0020ABC2-C1257CE9.0022B4CA@xxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

I agree, it is all about personal commitments. And when I read your email,
it seemed to be obvious that if there is a need for personal commitment,
there should a way for personal reward.

At the moment we promote only, as far as I know, top
committer/contributor/evangelist/etc., but that means there is only a small
group of people rewarded personally each year, usually already well-known
in the Eclipse world. But there is a huge number of committers or regular,
valuable contributors out there who do good job but usually are not
rewarded in any way (well, maybe in acknowledgements notes at the time or
release, but who really reads it carefully?). You can't tell who is a
committer unless you take a look at eclipse.org pages and look for a
specific name. If being a committer/valuable contributor is an honour and
privilege then why don't we promote it in a visible way?

How about some sort certification for committers and/or valuable
contributors issued by EF?

A new committer could get a certificate stating something along the lines
that this is to certify that John Smith is an Eclipse committer in project
XYZ, with a signature of the EF director so that it is official and
professional but cool at the same time. Something that a committer could
put on the wall above his desk so that his colleagues at work can be
jealous about. Valuable contributors could also receive a certificate or
even email saying that the EF and the community would like to thank John
Smith for his valuable contributions to the XYZ project.

Instead of motivating a company to contribute, we could motivate
individuals to do that and reward them in some visible way they can be
proud of and show off in front of their manager, colleagues, etc. And even
if their company doesn't follow, we likely get a bunch of jealous
developers desperately wanting to get a cool certificate ;-) If we can't
use a stick, we need to make sure the carrot is big enough and the word
will spread itself.

I know this doesn't directly answer your question, but each company is made
of individuals and if individual developers/architects/managers/CEOs are
not convinced by Eclipse projects and Eclipse itself, then there is no way
a company will invest anything in it.

Szymon



From:   Michael Scharf <eclipse@xxxxxxxxx>
To:     ide-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx,
Date:   2014-05-31 00:03
Subject:        [ide-dev] How to encourage contributions and what kind of
            contributions?
Sent by:        ide-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx



Hi,

I am giving an in-house RCP training next week, for a
company that builds some RCP based products.

The audience will be developers. However, what would be the
best message to encourage the company to contribute?

And what forms of contributions are valuable? The classical
answer seems to be "write bug reports and send patches,
spread the word, get engaged":
    https://www.eclipse.org/contribute/

But most of this is in some way is a "personal" commitments. Even
becoming a member company, is kind of personal. None of this can
convince a "German Accountant" to let money flow.... I always have to
think about the story behind the http://heartbleed.com bug....

But I also wonder how else can a company make sure
RCP and eclipse is maintained and developed in the future?
- paying for ... (what?)?
- hiring contractors (like Lars or Tom (or me ;-))) to fix bugs?
- participating in the long term support project?
- ... what else

So, what would be YOUR message if you are asked to motivate
a company to contribute to eclipse? What other ways than
"personal commitment" can help eclipse?


Michael
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End of ide-dev Digest, Vol 9, Issue 6
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