e4: Now With More Openness!

Well I haven't been blogging too much since EclipseCon. I came home from EclipseCon with a nasty bout of pneumonia which kept me on the bench for a bit, and ever since I've been back in the game I've been working flat out on the Remote Development Tools (RDT) initiative. (So flat out in fact that the wiki page that link goes to is woefully out of date. ) A lot of late hours and many Red Bulls later, we've got a first proof of concept demo up and running on the new RDT framework in time for our upcoming deadline, so I can finally take a bit of time again for things like attending meetings and blogging about them.

I spent Thursday and Friday last week at the e4 Summit. I won't bore everyone with all the technical details, as those can be found on the wiki page, but I wanted to make a point to express some serious kudos to everyone that made this meeting happen, especially given my past criticisms of openness in the platform.

The platform is entering a new era of openness. Seeing thirty people from thirteen different companies/organizations all working together under the scrutiny of the public eye to help design and build the next generation of the Eclipse Platform is a wonderful sight to behold. All the discussion and decisions are being made in the open where anyone can participate, whether it's at the Summit, on the mailing lists, or on the upcoming project conference calls. All the people who attended the summit are going to receive commit rights (if they want them) under the aegis of the new incubator project (which is not the old incubator project).

So, massive props to the Platform Team and everyone else involved. You are doing a great thing right now, and you deserve to be recognized for it. Good on ya!

We've got a lot of momentum going right now on e4. Great opportunities are opening up for everyone to participate in something special here, whether it's on the new browser-based-Eclipse stuff, or working or a new resource model, or something else. If you think there is something that should be a part of e4 that isn't, now is your time to speak up and contribute.

I want to emphasize the word contribute as well. People have harped on the Platform for years about it being hard to contribute to. Now that things are changing in that respect, the onus is on the rest of the community to put their code where their mouth is. Being open is not the silver bullet to build a thriving, diverse committer community. Ultimately it takes people writing code, and you could be one of those people. If you want to see something happen, pick up a keyboard and lend a hand, any way you can. The Platform folks are doing their part in opening things up, now it's the community's turn to take advantage of the opportunity. Don't waste it.