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.

Outline

Why open source:

• various phases of open source trajectory
• reasons for commitment to continued project development in the open source space.
• why Eclipse

IP Process

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

Eclipse infrastructure and build

• How Eclipse does version control and builds (Wayne)
• How we used to version control and build, how we do them now (GIT, Tycho, Maven)
• Single sourcing of documentation and resources for differently named products that share a common (large) core
• Bugs at Eclipse * Bugzilla

Community

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

Process

• 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

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