Re: [cross-project-issues-dev] Future of Eclipse IDE

[Aleksandar Kurtakov <akurtako@xxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Gunnar Wagenknecht" <gunnar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: "Cross project issues" <cross-project-issues-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2013 12:01:50 PM
> Subject: [cross-project-issues-dev] Future of Eclipse IDE
> 
> Am 18.07.2013 um 09:59 schrieb Mickael Istria < mistria@xxxxxxxxxx >:
> 
> 
> Eclipse Foundation is IMO the only organization which is able to be efficient
> at listening to the "market" of IDEs
> 
> I strongly disagree with this statement. There are many organizations as well
> as companies out there that can perform this equally efficient if not
> better. In fact, there used to be a company in the past. Also, anything the
> Foundation does is an investment as well. Simply put, in the end someone has
> to pay for it.

I would say the problem of Eclipse is being too "corporative". Many people believe there has to be some huge corporation backing it up. 
And this is not sustainable long-term. Yes, big corporation can fund many things and etc. but what happens if/when it loses interest? 
Go back to limbo state? Overload few individuals to try keep things like working? No matter who will fund the work you needed people with passion
about it, ready to spend their own time and energy if needed and etc. to keep it alive long term. If we are looking for someone paying X 9to5 programmers for Y months we are doomed to have this discussion periodically. 


> 
> BTW, when doing competitive analysis I also disagree with an earlier argument
> that some ide isn't free and therefore doesn't count. There are a bunch of
> people out there that would rather spend a two digit amount for something
> that helps them get their work done more efficiently.
> 
> Anyway, just looking at the raw numbers, the issue is obvious. There were *a
> million* commits in the "eclipse" project (what I consider "platform")
> within three years back in 2004. It was only a good third in the last three
> years (2010-2012).
> http://dash.eclipse.org/dash/commits/web-app/summary.cgi
> 
> Those commits went into a lot of things truly important for innovation higher
> up the stack (SWT, Text, JFace, Resources). SWT has been in maintenance mode
> since important committers left. Oracle is investing a lot into JavaFX.
> There is some shift towards the web. There is a lot innovation happening at
> Orion. Also, the diversification into areas such as M2M, Polarsys, etc. help
> the Foundation maintaining a steady interest in the Foundation model. But
> what does this mean for the IDE?

I would dare to say that many people complain but very few contribute back.
And it's not that hard. With my SWT hat on getting an intern from knowing nothing about SWT to being one of the most effective contributors during Kepler was a matter of few teaching sessions. The whole argument about complexity and getting new people in is totally wrong. Yes, there are very hard items that very few people know in enough details to fix properly but there are tens(if not hundreds) more items that are easy to do and allowing others to do them actually frees time for the few people capable of dealing with the hard items to work on them. I doubt it will be harder for other parts of the Platform to get substantial but easy improvements. Existing committer can easily teach one new each.

Alexander Kurtakov
Red Hat Eclipse team

> 
> Frankly, I think Orion is too early. There is still much attraction in native
> IDEs. We all have good ideas to improve the Eclipse IDE in ways we can. I've
> put energy into a proposal to address the preference issues within the
> packages. There is progress on this end. I've also put quite a bit energy
> into improving things in the past as well. There is only so much you can do
> as a single contributor not even working full-time on things. But I got
> frustrated along the way. Too much of the platform is still dominated and
> controlled too strictly by that one single company. Contributions got turned
> away because of the "lack of resources" argument and associated maintenance
> costs long term. To some point those arguments aren't completely invalid.
> I'm at a point of being resigned when it comes to contributing to the
> platform.
> 
> Without a team that is sufficiently funded for an interesting time period,
> it's only the small steps we can do. I'm wondering if those small steps will
> be enough for the IDE to have a future. Well, being a German I am actually
> more concerned than wondering but I consider this a better thing than not
> caring at all. I really appreciate the time and energy people are spending
> on this discussion.
> 
> -Gunnar
> 
> --
> Gunnar Wagenknecht
> gunnar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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