Development Resources/HOWTO/Proposal Phase

See "6.2.2 Pre-Proposal Phase" in the Eclipse Development Process

The proposers, in conjunction with the destination PMC and

the community, collaborate in public to enhance, refine, and clarify

the proposal. Mentors for the project must be identified during this phase.

(1) How Much Time?

The Proposal Phase is when the proposers, in conjunction with the destination PMC and the community-at-large, collaborate in public to enhance, refine, and clarify the proposal. This phase could take as little as a few weeks (for a highly active, desirable, and non-controversial proposal) to a couple months (for a proposal that requires coordinating many contributors with perhaps competing interests).

When the proposers and the EMO are confident that the proposers have sufficient community support for the proposal, the process can progress to the next step: the Creation Review. Please see the Guidelines for Creation Reviews for details of the requirements.

The proposers must strive to do as much of the community building as possible in public although this is not always possible. In any case, the proposers must avoid arriving at a public announcement fait accompli - the process of recruiting, gathering, and establishing community support must be open to all Eclipse members and to any who would like to become members.

(2) What Do We Do?

The worst action new proposal authors can take is to post the proposal and then sit back and wait for people to join the project. The "build a better mousetrap and wait for them to pound a path to your door" model of building a community just doesn't work.

Creating community support around a proposal is an active outreach activity:

• talk up your proposal on the newsgroups and mailing lists of similar or related Eclipse projects
• talk up your proposal on the forums and mailing lists of non-Eclipse open source projects
• make personal contact with senior Eclipse developers and ask for pointers to anyone them know who would be interested in your proposal (do not assume that they have read, or even know about, your proposal - introduce them to it with an elevator pitch)
• contact the EMO for similar introductions
• discuss your proposal and how great it is in your blog
• etc.

(3) Legal Paperwork To Start Now

GIt is important for the proposers to begin moving the various Committer Agreements through their company's legal department as the paperwork always seems to take longer than one would like. The project cannot be provisioned (source code repository, bug repository, website, etc.) without completed legal paperwork.

Similarly, the proposers will want to start gathering the required documentation for the initial code contribution questionnaire. The important information includes:

• Documentation of code ownership and the right of the proposer to contribute the code under the EPL
• Licenses, source code, and provenance of all third-party (non-EPL) code included or referenced in or by the EPL'ed initial code.
• And by all, we mean ALL the code: many third-party libraries include other third party libraries and those include others and so on and so on.

(4) Creation Review

When the proposers and the EMO are confident that the proposers have sufficient community support for the proposal, the process can progress to the next step: the Creation Review. Please see the Guidelines for Creation Reviews for details of the requirements.

This page is moderated by Anne Jacko and Bjorn Freeman-Benson (Eclipse Foundation)