ECE2011/Starting an Eclipse Project: The first 90 days… and the year that follows

What are you getting yourself into by deciding to host your project at Eclipse? From the decision to open source your software, to the formal processes for intellectual property and development, all the way up to the generation and care of the community, the road may contain more twists and turns than you expect. Unless of course, you have a map – which is what we’d like to try and give you.

This talk looks at the steps for hosting your project at Eclipse from various aspects, and through two sets of eyes. Wayne Beaton combines his knowledge of the Eclipse and IP processes with the recent experiences of Markus Tiede, a committer on the new Jubula project. Together, they navigate through the "why" of open sourcing software, the "how" it is done at Eclipse, the "what" else to expect, and the "who" of the project – the community.

60 minutes.

• Entry on the EclipseCon Schedule
• Slide Content

Outline

The timings are estimates. They need to be adjusted, as they currently don't add up to 60 min.

Why open source

Speaker: Wayne (7 min)

• Introduction - what does open source mean
• Various phases of open source trajectory
• Long term support requirements
• Shared burden

Speaker: Markus (7 min)

• Who are we and who is this Jubula?
• Why did Bredex bring GUIdancer into Open Source
• Reasons for commitment to continued project development in the open source space.
• Why Eclipse

IP Process

Speaker: Wayne (12 min)

• Why does Intellectual property management matter?
• Overview of the Eclipse IP process

Speaker: Markus (5 min)

• What had to be changed and why: example Hibernate, Logging
• What that meant (work, risk, testing, time...)
• Alternatives? Which one to choose and why?

Eclipse infrastructure and build

Speaker: Wayne (5 min)

• The future of source code management and builds at Eclipse
• How Eclipse does version control and builds
• Git/Maven/Tycho/Hudson

Speaker: Markus (5 min)

• Overview of Jubula's development and build infrastructure
• Killing two birds with one stone.. - connecting in- and external build infrastructures

Community

Speaker: Wayne (5 min)

• Openness and Transparency
  • Transparency is about inviting participation, Openness is about accepting it.
• Importance of planning/flexibility in project plans

Speaker: Markus (5 min)

• Why community is so important
• What sort of things can be done with Eclipse to generate and maintain interest / community
  • Bugzilla, Mailing lists, Webinars, Forum, Website, Wiki, Blog at planet Eclipse, talks at conferences, demo camps ...
• Other community activities
  • Videos, Twitter, Facebook etc.

Process

Speaker: Markus (5 min)

• The unexpected effects of moving to a timeline that is a) largely unknown and b) externally determined
• What deadlines are there?
• How can a process suffer / recover from these effects?

Results

Speaker: Markus (5 min)

• Current status
• Plans for the future (what is still to be done after a year, and how important is it)
• Community and collaboration