Technology/Project Reviews

The Technology PMC reviews projects on an ongoing basis. This review is not part of the Eclipse Development Process. More specifically, this review is not a creation, release, graduation, move, or other form of review as defined by the development process. This is a less formal review undertaken under the Technology PMC's initiative to gauge the wellness of a project and determine how the PMC might be of help to the project. As a general rule, projects to review are initially selected in alphabetical order.

We use the guidelines set out in Community Development for Eclipse Projects as input into these reviews.

Pending Reviews

• BPEL Designer Project
• Community-driven Systems Management in Open Source Project
• Dash, Tools for Committers and members
• Dynamic Languages Toolkit
• ECM Rich Client Platform
• OSEE

Winter 2008 Reviews

OSEE

• Reviewed by Wayne Beaton
• Started January 8, 2009
• Initial observations

Fall 2008 Reviews

Babel

• Reviewed by Wayne Beaton
• Started November 28, 2008
• Initial Review

Results

The Babel project seems to be progressing nicely. They have developed (and are continuing to develop) an active community. We provided them with a few suggestions on how they might improve the experience of users visiting their site which they appear to have implemented.

Community-driven Systems Management in Open Source Project (COSMOS)

• Reviewed by Wayne Beaton
• Started October 31, 2008
• Initial Review (link pending)

Results

I've done my review of the COSMOS project. It is my assessment that the project is progressing well. While I'd like to see more community development, it does seem that the project already has a very diverse group of committers, along with some commercial adoption. As I note below, most of the commits are coming from IBM employees, but a steady flow is also being registered by SAS and CA.

The project seems to be doing the right sort of things to help newcomers familiarize themselves with the project. The website provides good help and the developers appear to be responsive in the newsgroup. I'd like to see more blogging along with more explicit outreach.

I am a little concerned about how the project is labeling their releases. Their current naming scheme does not seem to conform to the conventions that are being followed by most other projects. Though it could just be that I don't understand what they're doing.

Application Lifecycle Framework Project

• Reviewed by Wayne Beaton and Bjorn Freeman-Benson
• Started October 6, 2008
• Note to PMC announcing intent to review
• Initial Review

Results

Sadly, our review of ALF has resulted in the termination of the project (see the termination review). While there was some ongoing development, the project was not able to develop a community.

Nebula

• Reviewed by Chris Aniszczyk
• Started October 9, 2008
• Initial Review

Results

The results of the review have been positive so far. As a direct result of the review, Tom Schindl became co-lead of the Nebula project. He's committed to getting an automated build system in place for the Nebula project. He's also trying to get the Nebula project to adhere to the Eclipse incubation guidelines so Nebula can take advantage of Parallel IP. Also, there's been discussion of having each nebula widget become a sub-project of Nebula with its own lead and release rules.

Summer 2008 Reviews

Accessibility Tools Framework

• Reviewed by Wayne Beaton
• Started August 6, 2008 (In celebration of Wayne's 40th birthday)
• Initial review

Results

ACTF is developing well, but needs to spend more effort in the development of an active community around the project.

Albireo

• Reviewed by Wayne Beaton
• Started August 25, 2008
• Initial review

Results

Development on Albireo appears to be slowing, but is continuing. There has been little community involvement behind the project. The project committers need to spend more effort in the development of an active community.

Aperi Storage Management Project

• Reviewed by Wayne Beaton
• Started September 4, 2008
• Initial review

Results

The Aperi project leadership tells us that they are actively participating in the storage management community. We have asked them to spend more effort to participate more actively in the broader Eclipse community.

The project leadership is considering a longer term scenario where Aperi becomes a project under a top-level COSMOS project.

Consensus seems to be that the project is progressing reasonably well.