Mobile Working Group

Executive Summary

• This is a draft proposal to create a “Eclipse for Mobile Working Group (EMWG)” of Eclipse Foundation members which will be focused on increasing the momentum as a development platform for mobile devices.
• The working group will be responsible for defining and driving mobile-specific “profiles” for both Eclipse tools and runtimes.
• Profiles are a collection of artifacts intended to define set of Eclipse projects and best practices to meet the needs of a specific industry segment such as financial services, insurance, telecom, etc.
• The complete list of content of profiles is TBD, but would include one or more:
  • Packages of Eclipse projects tailored to meet the needs of the mobile industry
  • Best practice documentation
  • EPF process documentation and the like. (More details below.)
  • Test cases
  • End to End use cases
  • Compliance tests
  • Bugs against other projects
  • Pointers to External dependencies

Eclipse for Mobile - Accelerating the pace

Eclipse lacks leadership and momentum as a development platform for mobile devices. This proposal suggests a new approach to address this problem.

Today, the three mobile-focused Eclipse projects – eRCP, Mobile Tools for Java and Tools for Mobile Linux – are having difficulties in creating large, diverse developer communities. These projects are attempting to create runtimes, tools & frameworks that enable the creation of selected mobile development environments. One reason for the lack of momentum in these mobile projects is that they are very thin slices of an overall mobile development platform.

The proposal is to create an Eclipse for Mobile Working Group (EMWG) within the Eclipse organization that brings together the major commercial mobile suppliers that have a unified interest in creating a more holistic offering, including a packaged Eclipse for Mobile product.

The initial set of commercial suppliers could include – Nokia, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, UIQ, and Symbian. All of these mobile companies share in current development technologies (JavaME, Symbian) and have interests in new technologies (Web2.0, Linux).

The EMWG would define a) the ideal end goal and b) alternative approaches to reaching this goal in the near term.

Goals

• The goal of the EMWG will be to define and create a collection of artifacts with the goal of forwarding the utility of and adoption of Eclipse technologies within the mobile industry.
• In doing so, the EMWG will be acting to complement the open source community by providing feedback and direction for various projects. The EMWG cannot direct projects to implement specific features, however, the goal will be to provide guidance on how to improve Eclipse technology offerings so that they can be used in industry solutions.

Governance

• Steering committee comprised of Eclipse strategic members
• Commitment of up to $250K/per for strategic member as per the membership agreement
• Plus additional $100K for community enablement and 1 person to work full-time as a technical evangelist
• Requires a two year commitment from each participant

There will be two levels of membership for Industry Working Groups:

1. Anchor Member and
2. Community Member.

Both levels of membership require:

1. existing membership in the Eclipse Foundation
2. a minimum two year commitment to the Eclipse for Mobile Working Group

Anchor Members

Anchor members will form the core group of companies that sponsor the Eclipse for Mobile Working Group. These companies are making a strategic investment in the success of industry initiative. The obligations of anchor members include:

1. annual contributions to the Eclipse for Mobile Working Group of US$100 thousand for those companies whose annual revenue is greater than or equal to US$250 million and US$10 thousand for those companies whose annual revenue is less than $250 million; and
2. contribution of 1 technical resource to support the activities of the Working Group. The technical resource will be required to work at least 75% of their time, on Eclipse for Mobile Working Group activities.

Anchor Members will have access to all the benefits produced by the EMWG at no additional charge beyond the annual payment of dues. This includes all leads generated by any Working Group marketing programs, identification as a sponsor in all EMWG-related marketing programs, and participation in defining the programs for the IWG.

All companies with greater than or equal to US$250 million annual revenue will be required to participate as an Anchor Member.

Community Members

Community membership is open to any Eclipse Foundation member organization with less than $250 million annual revenue. There is no cost for community membership.

Community members will have the opportunity to define and participate in selected programs organized by the EMWG (such as sponsor webinars or trade show exhibits).

Participation in the selected marketing programs will require a sponsorship fee that will be based on each particular marketing program.

Description

• The Eclipse Mobile Working Group will be required to draft a charter.
• The EMWG will follow a TBD formal creation lifecycle similar to the OpenAjax development process, including the creation of a EMWG charter. (The astute reader will recognize the fact that this is basically a slimmed-down version of our own development process.)
• As an Eclipse working group, participation would be restricted to members of the Eclipse Foundation. This includes corporate members and committer members.
• All EMWG meetings are closed to members only, and all intellectual property is shared via the EPL and the Eclipse.org Terms of Use.
• The EMWG would be provided with a standard set of Eclipse.org infrastructure support.
  • Mailing list
  • [TBC] Newsgroup
  • Wiki page(s)
• The EMWG would be assigned an EMO staff member as its primary contact.
• The EMWG would be expected to define, fund and implement joint marketing programs to further the aims of the group.
• It is anticipated that the EMWG would support the creation and evolution of one or more open source projects at Eclipse.
• The Eclipse Foundation would provide logistical and other support for arranging meetings and events at the request of the EMWG. We would, of course, encourage the EMWG to align their meetings with other Eclipse events such as EclipseCon and ESE.
• The output of the EMWG will include the formal release of the following:
  • Using the Eclipse Packaging Project, one or more “industry packages” of Eclipse projects which in combination best meet the needs of the target industry segment.
    • Such packages will be hosted on Eclipse.org for distribution.
    • Documentation on best practices for using Eclipse technologies would be expected to be contained in the industry package.
    • Each such package definition would contain "platform" projects and reference "extension" projects.
  • The definition of one or more end-to-end scenarios which motivate a collection of use cases for the industry package.
  • A set of test cases for the industry package which can be executed to validate new versions of the technologies.
  • Contributions to the projects with bug fixes and enhancements for the projects relevant to the EMWG.
• In addition to the above, the EMWG may optionally also support the creation of additional Eclipse projects to provide a home for development specifically focused on the needs of the industry segment.