[osgi-wg] [eclipsecon] Some Feedback on "What OSGi-WG can do better to h

[Christoph Läubrich <laeubi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

At the EclipseCon[1] there was a "Birds of a Feather" of the OSGi-WG and 
it was asked what could the working-group do for their users and what 
they want to see for the future or haven any issues with OSGi.

Sadly this quickly turned into a very scary rant about Tycho/PDE and how 
bad that is and BND is all the glory solution, even we don't have had 
know what problem the user in question was facing as he just complained 
about missing documentation (What is a valid point, so please everyone 
participate here to improve it [2])!

I was really saddened about that and also other people I talked to 
afterwards where quite perplexed ... this really does not feel open, 
welcoming or "respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences"[3] it 
was nothing I would summarize under "community friendly" as stated as a 
goal in the happy new year letter from the OSGi-WG[3].

I think there are always different users, different tools and different 
ways so solve problems, I even always try to push eclipse-platform 
towards using OSGi best practice (some even would say 'annoy them with') 
and increase interoperability between Tycho/BND or other tools and even 
contribute to many of them, so user have the *choice* what best fits 
their needs!

This actually has leave me back in a very very bad mood thinking about 
if it is even worth to still try participate in OSGi-WG at all and if I 
just should unsubscribe from all the channels and leave it alone.

But actually that's not a solution for me and so finally I'd like to 
propose some "What OSGi-WG can do better to help their users":

1) WG should decide weather tools are a concern of the working-group or not

2a) If tools are a concern and OSGi-WG decides that there is only "one 
tool to bnd them all" [5] the tool should become part of the OSGi 
repository, developed and managed under the charta of the OSGi-WG

2b) If tools are a concern and OSGi-WG agree that there is a diversity 
of tools and techniques for using/building OSGi or tools are considered 
no concern, it would be really beneficial for the people highly involved 
in WG+Tools to trying to be aware of what "role" they currently like to 
represent in a certain situation and being "vendor neutral", as OSGi 
claims to be, when choosing the OSGi-WG role.

Thanks for patiently reading my mail and feel free to either contact me 
directly or discuss it on the list if you feel to give any feedback.

best
Christoph


[1] https://www.eclipsecon.org/2022
[2] https://github.com/eclipse-tycho/tycho/discussions/1597
[3] https://www.eclipsecon.org/2022/eclipse-community-events-code-conduct
[4] https://blog.osgi.org/2022/01/goodby-2021-welcome-2022.html
[5] https://bnd.bndtools.org/