I've tried to focus on getting the important ideas captured. Please feel free to challenge the ideas in comments, but please resist wordsmithing. We are sending this to our technical writer to have her massage it into form.
I've included a start on an FAQ at the bottom of the document. Feel free to add questions.
I've authored the latest draft of the Eclipse Foundation Specification Process with the following in mind.
- The Eclipse Development Process is the foundation of the process;
- Follow the general flow and tone of the Eclipse Development Process;
- We want to keep this as lightweight as possible (corollary: we want to include only what is necessary);
- Our primary goal is to ensure that IP flows are managed; and
- Our technical writer will work this into a usable form.
I've tried to structure the EFSP document similar to the EDP.
IMHO, the EFSP exists primarily to accommodate the IP flows associated with specification development. This manifests as two fundamentally important additions to the EDP: Specification Committee approval, and Committer legal status (along with the notion of Participants). Everything else falls out from that.
The Specification Committee is required to approve all lifecycle events by super-majority. All lifecycle events are wrapped in the EDP notion of a Review. The notion of Service Releases exists in the EDP, but has no attached ceremony (Reviews are not required for Service Releases). To deal with the IP flows issue, the EFSP requires super-majority approval of Service Releases.
Committers need to be members of the Eclipse Foundation, and they need to have signed the Working Group Participation Agreement.
Some notes...
We reference a Progress Review which is not in the current version of the EDP. It will be added by the time this document is approved (they'll likely be approved at the same time). FWIW, I'm also going to separate out the definitions in the next iteration of the EDP.
I have tried to prefer references where possible, and have avoided duplicating parts of other documents. At some point in the future, I envision merging the EDP with the EFSP in some manner (I don't necessarily mean that they become one document).
I've added some terms based on the draft patent policy that the lawyers are working on (it requires certain definitions to exist in the Specification Process).
- Termination of participation
- Reviews ("Interim Reviews")
- Final Specification
- Published
I've made almost no attempt to discuss branding short of providing hooks for it. I'm thinking, though, that the requirements to include the notions of Final Specification and Published and their obvious relationship to special licensing suggests that tighter coupling to branding (or at least what happens after a Specification Version is adopted) is required.
Your feedback is welcome.
Wayne
