Hi, I have some news that I think is of interest to the Rails community. For some time now I have been involved with the Eclipse Process Framework (EPF) project. To this project I have donated Wiki technology that I developed using Rails, which I named 'EPF Wiki'. This technology is designed to be used together with EPF Composer. The donation is still under Eclipse Legal Review, is has been for some time. The idea of adding Wiki technology to EPF is to have a more community based process for process engineering, process improvement.
For a number of reasons this is interesting I think: - This is web technology when Eclipse projects typically produce 'plug- ins' for Eclipse. This solution combines an Eclipse IDE (EPF Composer) and a web application (Wiki). I think a good process framework should also have a Web (2.0) front end. - It is Ruby code and a Rails application. I'm not sure but I think it is the first time Ruby code (or a Rails application) has been donated to Eclipse.
It is also interesting how this Wiki technology and EPF Composer brings together two distinct worlds: process frameworks (that impose strict structure, SPEM) and Wikis (with no structure imposed and issues with structure).
Upon request of the EPF community I have also started the site
http://www.epfwiki.net, which I created using the donated code. I'm
currently moving this server to an eclipse.org managed server, so the
official Eclipse infrastructure will also be powered by Rails and my
little Rails app 
I think this is an interesting concept and development that deserves more attention than I can give as the lone part-time developer. I was wondering if there are Rails developers that want to contribute to the community site (epfwiki.net) and the official Eclipse distribution. I think there is lot of unrealized potential and a lot of exciting stuff to work on. There is considerable interest in and enthusiasm for using this type of community based approach to process engineering/ improvement. Can we make it as social and exciting as the examples of fleck.com, del.icio.us or Diigo? I think it needs more of that.
Contributing to an open source project is a valuable experience. I learned a lot about great open source products (Rails, Subversion, RadRails, Eclipse Process Framework), about an important open source community (Eclipse) and its process ('The Eclipse Way').
But if you have seen and done this type of development many times
before, I especially hope you will consider contributing and help me
develop a great application and establish a 'foothold' for Rails and
Rails developers in the Eclipse (Java) community
Please contact me if you want to contribute, experienced or not, e.g. if you want to: - Improve your RoR skills by working on a concrete project, application. - learn more about Eclipse open source development (e.g.Eclipse Way) - support Rails by helping improve this technology and show the Eclipse community how great web applications can be build using RoR;) - learn about the Eclipse platform by working on the integration of the Wiki technology with EPF Composer
More information about Eclipse Process Framework: Eclipse Process Framework Project (EPF) | The Eclipse Foundation More information about EPF Wiki: http://www.epfwiki.net/other/about
Thanks and Regards, Onno van der Straaten EPF Committer
