[technology-pmc] Nexus project

[Wayne Beaton <wayne@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings most revered Technology PMC members,

I'd like to draw your attention to the Nexus Project proposal [1]. The 
Nexus project is conceived as a home for so-called "micro" projects that 
are too small to be projects in their own right. I think there are a lot 
of good ideas in the proposal that we should consider.

My first thought when I read this is that I'm not sure that I can think 
of a project that's too small to be a project. It's true that there is a 
lot of overhead to being an Eclipse project. That said, I think that 
there is a lot that we can do to reduce the overhead. We can, for 
example, build a proposal template to make it easier to propose new 
projects, be more proactive in finding mentors for the projects, 
encourage projects to go right to the wiki rather than fiddle with PHP, 
and maybe even assemble a package to help new committers understand 
things like the IP process. That last part was the focus of some 
discussion on the last Architecture Council call, so we'll likely get 
some help there.

As an aside, I've been having similar thoughts about the SOC project.

Project longevity is certainly something that we need to work out. The 
proposal suggests that Nexus should eventually become a top-level 
project. Without something like Nexus, the proposed micro projects would 
be required to find a more permanent home as they reach a state of 
maturity. I'm not sure how big a problem this is, but it is worth some 
consideration.

There's a lot more to discuss; I'd like to hear your initial thoughts. 
I'd also like to go through a mental exercise with the Potential Initial 
Projects listed at the bottom to see how they would live and mature (a) 
under the Nexus project, or (b) without something like the Nexus project.

Thanks,

Wayne

[1] http://wiki.eclipse.org/Nexus_Project