Life at Eclipse

On Saturday morning I had a chance to both attend and speak at the first BarCamp Ottawa.

For anyone who’s ever wondered if these BarCamp “unconferences” really work, the answer is a most emphatic yes. The talks I went to were great. And at what other event could you attend both a talk on Aspect-Oriented Programming and The Future of the Telephone?

The event was well worth the time investment and — scheduling gods permitting — I am already looking forward to attending the next one.

And thanks, Alec for the kind words on my talk.

One of the most interesting new products being built on top of the Eclipse RCP is the new version of IBM’s Lotus Notes client. Dubbed the “Hannover” release, it is a complete significant re-write of the Notes UI on top of RCP. (Or more accurately on top of Workplace Client which is on top of RCP.)

The screenshots (you can see some here and here) really drive home the fact that you can build very compelling rich client experiences with RCP. This stuff looks nothing like Eclipse. Which is very much the point.

Last week Mary Beth started a new blog focused on the UI design for the client. In a short week, she has gotten dozens of responses from the community, plus at least one lively debate.

It’s definitely worth watching as it evolves.

Change note: As pointed out by Richard Schwartz, I was incorrect to characterize Hannover as a complete re-write.

The Eclipse community suffered a great loss this weekend with the passing of Kim Clohessy. Within Eclipse, Kim was one of the leaders of the Open Healthcare Framework project. But for many of us who have deep roots with OTI, Kim had been a friend, mentor and colleague for many years.

I just received a note from Linda Campbell at QNX, who said it better than I ever could:

I am sad that I never told him personally how grateful I was for everything he did for me…. He was a very good man. In addition to being a visionary, he was kind, generous, honourable, loyal, and trustworthy. I feel very lucky to have had the chance to do business with him and to learn from his wisdom and experience…left his mark on all of us, and an entire industry to boot.

It was only ten months ago that Kim joined John, Jon and I on our annual Northern Canada fishing trip. I will always remember his good humour and good company. He didn’t catch the biggest fish (see photo), but you couldn’t ask for more enjoyable company if you’re going to spend twelve hours in a small boat.

He will be missed.

For those who knew Kim, at the request of his family donations can be made to the American Melanoma Foundation.

I just came across this post on John O’Shea’s blog. I think it raises a very interesting point:

Unfortunately, Eclipse.org is also starting to exhibit similar cracks. A cursory look at the architectures of many of the top level projects (WTP, STP, TPTP, BIRT etc.) shows the lack of intra-project cooperation is resulting in frameworks that simply don’t integrate with one another in they ways we all want them to. I’m not sure whether the PMCs are responsible for this failure or if it is also the committer’s responsibility to “fit in” to the larger Eclipse eco-system better.

My sense is that this is an interesting dilemma for Eclipse. On one hand, some want Eclipse to be a highly integrated platform with a seamless experience across platforms, languages and lifecycle. (Callisto is a modest step in that direction.) On the other hand, as an open source community some focus on diversity and innovation and are uninterested in the heavy hand of centralized authority.

Sort of a Cathedral versus Bazaar dilemma.

So what do you think? Where do we need to find the balance within the Eclipse community?

Interestingly, Callisto is an example of where the Bazaar worked in interesting ways. The idea to do Callisto came from the projects themselves. It was not an idea that came from the Eclipse Foundation.

I get to join Ian at the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) this week. I spent several hours today walking the exhibit floor looking for Eclipse-based tools and products. They’re everywhere! I am really miffed with myself for forgetting to bring my camera.

Just a partial list of companies showing Eclipse-based tools are: QNX, WindRiver, Aonix, AMD, DDC-I, ENEA, IBM, KlocWork, LynuxWorks, Mentor Graphics, MontaVista and TimeSys.

The icing on the cake was discovering that Eclipse was the cover story for the issue of Embedded Systems Design being distributed at the conference. We had no idea, so it was a very welcome surprise.

I know that many people associate Eclipse with enterprise development tools, and more specifically with Java development, but the number of companies in the Eclipse ecosystem engaged with embedded and device software is massive. For most of these companies, the ability to build their tool chain by extending the Eclipse Platform and/or the C/C++ development tools (CDT) is a great enabler for their platforms.

Many thanks for Doug Gaff (WindRiver), Anders Florin (ENEA) and others who helped staff the Eclipse booth today.