Life at Eclipse

NetBeans just shipped their 4.1 release. Congratulations guys. By all reports it is a much better Java IDE than its predecessor releases.

But this statement included in InfoWorld’s coverage of their release certainly has me stumped:

The Sun executives also expressed doubts about whether the Eclipse Foundation actually is independent of IBM, which founded Eclipse but spun it off into a separate organization last year.

I really don’t know what more the Eclipse Foundation could possibly do to be more independent than it is. From where I sit, I cannot understand how any reasonable person could assert anything other than Eclipse is independent.

But what do you think? Is there something more that the Foundation could be doing to be independent?

I would have thought that having IBM competitors like BEA, Borland and Computer Associates would have put this to bed. Each of these companies are investing $250,000 per year and eight developers into Eclipse. Why would they possibly do that if Eclipse was IBM controlled? Believe me, those companies did their homework before they made those kids of investment decisions.

BTW — here are some numbers that you may find interesting. Since September 2004, the number of Eclipse committers who work for IBM dropped from 79% to 58%. And the percentage of top-level projects led by IBM employees dropped from 66% to 33%. And based on the new proposals that we already have in process, that will soon drop further to 22%, along with the total IBM committer ratio dropping below 50%. (I wonder what the equivalent numbers are at NetBeans?)

We here at Eclipse will gladly take every developer IBM is willing to put onto our projects. The changes in percentages above are the result of growing the Eclipse pie, not by sending away IBM contributors. That would be silly.

But anyone who takes a look at our governance model and Bylaws will not find anything that gives IBM a special position within Eclipse.

Read my lips. Eclipse is independent.

I read this morning an interesting blog entry by Bob Foster entitled Eclipse is not Apache.

I certainly agree with Bob’s conclusions, which I summarize as:

(a) it would be exceedingly hard to use Eclipse as a dumping ground for code (you can also see my post on TheServerSide on the topic. Look for “We’re not a dump”)

(b) Eclipse does a pretty decent job of managing the scope and overlap in its projects.

(c) Eclipse should never attempt to pick winners in the projects. It’s a Darwinian ecosystem, and the best projects will rise to the top. In the end, it’s the consumers who will decide which projects are best.

Yep. Makes good sense to me.

But often I think that the whole “Apache is a dumping ground” or “Eclipse is a dumping ground” conversations are usually just plain wrong. Or at least misinformed. Both of these communities have pretty stringent development processes that weed out the wheat from the chaff early.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a company wanting to contribute existing code to an open source project. But the real test in our minds is always whether there are committers and contributors who are willing to form and support a vibrant project. Frankly, we would not take a wad of code that did not come with a development team, because code without developers is not an asset, its a liability.

But a code contribution accompanied by its developers and a commitment to continue to invest in its evolution is a pretty decent start for a project.

So I have been on the road again this week. First stop was Germany where I was speaking at the JAX conference. The buzz and energy around Eclipse is huge in Germany. Based on a show of hands, at least 90% of the crowd at JAX are using Eclipse for their Java development.

Germany is now the proud home of the world’s first Eclipse print magazine. The EclipseMagazin current edition is focused on using the Rich Client Platform, along with a preview of Eclipse 3.1. There are also articles on AspectJ and developing Python applications using Eclipse.

Today I was in Paris speaking to the Java Club here. Along with me were presentations from BEA, Ilog, Awoma, Versant, Omondo and ObjectWeb. It was certainly pretty cool to see this mix of large and small companies talk about the products they have been building with Eclipse.

Vladimir Varnica of Omondo really helped to get this event pulled together. Omondo is a pretty interesting company in that it is an Eclipse “pure play” venture. Not only are their EclipseUML Studio products built on Eclipse, but in a way their company is named after Eclipse. When Vlad and his team-mates wanted to start their company in 2002 they were searching for a name. There was a solar eclipse that year, so they searched for geographic landmarks which were under the full eclipse. And voila, Omondo it was. Now that’s a company dedicated to Eclipse!

Joe Winchester sent me an email asking whatever happened to the last slide presented at EclipseCon this year. You know, the one that talked about the various consumption patterns of the attendees. Well, here it is.

You really have to wonder if there is a correlation between the 792 gallons of coffee and the 2:00am peak internet use 🙂

I certainly have some fond memories of EclispeCon 2005. It will be a challenge to make it even better next year. BTW, it will be in Santa Clara on March 20-23, 2006.

One of the many hats that I wear is project lead for the Phoenix project at Eclipse. This is the project that we have proposed to rebuild the eclipse.org website.

The project is being set up using the same open source rules of engagement that other projects use at Eclipse. So please contribute via the eclipse.technology.phoenix newsgroup and/or the phoenix-dev mailing list. We will be getting CVS and Bugzilla set up after the project is officially created.

Once we get this project going, we are expecting to use an iterative approach to development. One of the first prototypes you can see is a mocked up home page with a new look and feel. Although we expect many changes, this can give you a feel for where the project team is thinking of taking the website. We would certainly appreciate lots of feedback on the newsgroup.

We’re really excited about this project. The Eclipse website has served us well for over three years now. But with the growth of the Eclipse community, we definitely need to re-invest in making it a more flexible and modern site.