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Re: [m2e-users] Thoughts on M2E

Sébastien,

I think you have some fundamental misunderstandings about how Open Source works. 

In its most basic form it's developers building what they are interested in, and users deciding whether what's been built is something they are interested in using. You are simply in a place where what you want from us is something we're not prepared to give. Unfortunately, like many other users, you fall prey to inadvertently insulting the people from whom you are asking help. Insinuating that we have somehow not lived up to some unstated promise, are untrustworthy and that we have somehow duped you into using software we have given away for free. Do you really trying to goad us is an effective way to try and achieve what you want?

From you:

1) On thing is sure: the plugin didn't live up to its promises to be a "first class" integration between Eclipse and Maven.
2) The feeling I have now is that for M2E, open source doesn't mean "let's share code and build together a better piece of software" but rather "I work on new features and let my users correct the mistakes I've made". 
3) So, what now? Should users still trust M2E? Should we expect this integration with the Eclipse organization to bring something useful?

Seriously? Open Source users often fall back on these tactics but just to be clear they are less effective than you might think.

You are also conflating our support for m2e in general with our support for Subversion. Sonatype does not have any commercial products related to m2e, we do it as a public service. Igor relentlessly answers questions from users and people trying to develop extensions. We do the necessary work to make the milestones and ship on the release train at Eclipse which is a significant amount of effort. We are committed to m2e. We have no interest in Subversion. These are not the same thing and you don't seem to be able to distinguish between those two things. As with everything focus can change and over time we at Sonatype have moved away from using Subversion to exclusively using Git.

Is it really our job to do yours?

The m2e-subversive and m2e-subversion code repositories are specifically not at Eclipse for the very reason that they are not supported by the m2e project. We initially created the support because we used it, but we don't anymore and if you want it to work flawlessly for your users then you are going to have to do a lot of work. I interpret you saying  "let's share code and build together a better piece of software" as it being our responsibility to make everything work seamlessly for you. That simply is not the case.

What are you doing Sébastien to make m2e a better piece of software? We created the initial code and originally supported it. We did not move the code to Eclipse, it's not officially supported and I believe your are confusing the work we do for free with commercial grade support. If you are not fluent with m2e extension development and need help then you can pay for support from EclipseSource, SpringSource and a number of other vendors. It's a lot of work to support an SCM as I'm sure you're well aware. People just giving us patches is not enough because when/if we release something users automatically assume it's fully supported.

As Rich Hickey, the creator of Clojure, says: I'm sorry that your free lunch isn't arriving fast enough.

We shared the code Sébastien and now as you say why don't you help us "build together a better piece of software" instead of tossing around insults. No one has ever stepped forward to fully support the Subversion connectors and it's not something we're going to do. If you want to maintain them we'd be happy to support your effort but it's not something we're going to be actively working on ever again from the m2e project with the current set of committers, they're is just no interest.

I will update all the resources that refer to Subversion as not to confuse people in the future.

Jason

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Jason van Zyl
Founder,  Apache Maven
Founder & CTO, Sonatype
http://twitter.com/jvanzyl
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I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.

-- Edward Gibbon






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