Hi everyone,
The JetBrains team has maintained the official Grails plugin for
IntelliJ IDEA for nearly 20 years. They have been in discussion with the
Grails project about the plugin's long-term future and have proposed two
concrete paths forward. JetBrains has expressed a clear preference for
Option B, but because this decision directly affects the Apache Grails
project, its users, and its tooling ecosystem, we are putting the choice
to a formal community vote.
For both options the plugin id stays the same, as it has been, and auto
update continues to work. There is no interruption for end users.
OPTION A: Open Source Under JetBrains Stewardship
The plugin would be released under the Apache 2.0 license and moved into
JetBrains' intellij-obsolete-plugins repository:
https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-obsolete-plugins/tree/master/grails
Yann and the JetBrains team have already begun the open-sourcing work
(some pieces are still outstanding).
Note on the repository name: Despite the name, plugins in this
repository continue to be built and released by JetBrains. The team
periodically addresses breaking changes in the IntelliJ Plugin API.
Key considerations for Option A:
- Opens the plugin to community contributions (a long-standing request
from the Grails community)
- JetBrains continues to manage builds, releases, PR merges, and release
scheduling
- JetBrains would provide reduced or no direct end-user support
- Transitional support offer from JetBrains to the Grails team: up to 8
hours/week for 6 months (same model used for Apache Kafka)
OPTION B: Full Donation to the Apache Grails Project
JetBrains would formally donate the plugin to the ASF so it can be
maintained as part of the Apache Grails project. The Grails
committers/PMC would take full responsibility for maintenance, PR
review, and independent releases.
Key considerations for Option B:
- Full control over the plugin's development direction, release cadence,
and maintenance by the Grails community
- The Grails team would be responsible for addressing future IntelliJ
Plugin API breakages (with potentially limited ongoing assistance from
JetBrains)
- JetBrains would provide reduced or no direct end-user support
- Same transitional support offer: up to 8 hours/week for 6 months from
JetBrains experts
JetBrains has stated they prefer Option B.
VOTING
This is a formal vote to choose our preferred direction. Because there
are two distinct options, we are using a preference-style vote while
staying within normal Apache conventions.
Please reply to this thread with one of the following:
[ ] +1 I prefer Option B (Full Donation to Apache Grails)
[ ] +1 I prefer Option A (Open Source under JetBrains Stewardship)
[ ] 0 Abstain / no strong preference
If you have a strong objection to one of the options, you may use -1 and
briefly explain your reasoning (for example: "-1 Option B because ...").
Binding votes from Grails PMC members carry full weight.
Community votes (+1/0/-1) from committers and active contributors are
strongly encouraged.
The option with the clearest support (most +1 votes among binding voters
and no overriding objections) will be pursued.
The vote will be open for at least 72 hours. I will post a [RESULT]
summary once we have sufficient participation and a clear outcome.
Thank you in advance for your thoughtful input. This is an important
decision for the future of Grails tooling inside IntelliJ IDEA.
My vote:
+1 I prefer Option B (Full Donation to Apache Grails)
Best regards,
James Fredley
