Life at Eclipse

Morning cup of Tim Horton’s coffee: $1.05
Tuna sandwich for lunch: $4.50
Listening to Donald giggle like a school girl when describing the Android SDK using Eclipse: priceless

One of the interesting phenomena about working at the Eclipse Foundation is the intelligence and strategy attributed to us. Take for example David Berlind:

For Sun, perhaps the big win will be on the developer tool front where, whatever Google comes up with, all Sun will have to do is retool the NetBeans Integrated Development Environment to support it. And clearly Sun is doing that. But so too will NetBean’s nemesis; the Eclipse Foundation (you knowwwwww that Eclipse won’t sit this one out). Meanwhile, regardless of what Sun does with NetBeans to support Google’s mobile Java initiatives, I’m sure the developer community would appreciate a reconciliation of the license situation. Sooner or later, that situation will come to a head.

While the common assumption is that Eclipse adoption happens because of incessant background conversations between the Eclipse Foundation and industry players, the fact of the matter is that at least half of the decisions are made without ever talking to us. Eclipse adoption is massively beyond the point where our small team at the Eclipse Foundation can direct it. So although David is correct that the Eclipse Foundation is not going to sit this one out, the decision wasn’t made or even influenced by us. Instead, it was made by Google. Without our knowledge. We were just as excited as everyone else to find out that the Android SDK was shipped with a plug-in for the Eclipse SDK.

And that is the key point: an open platform is one which people adopt because it is in their own best interests to adopt it. The developers working on Android made the call on their own, and not because of any talents of persuasion we may have at the Eclipse Foundation.

So to reinforce a point I made last week: at an open community adoption happens organically. Gated communities have their CEO’s announce future plans.

Open governance leads to open communities which leads to open platforms which leads to open adoption. Hmmmm maybe we’re onto something here at Eclipse?

As noticed by Genady and others, the Eclipse Foundation is in the running to join the SE/EE Executive Committee of the Java Community Process. The question, of course, is why? I thought I would share our answer via my blog as well.

…because we think we have a lot to offer the community.

We are intimately tied to Java at Eclipse, and the future success of Java is critical to our future success. You can be sure that the Eclipse Foundation will be a tireless advocate for greater openness and transparency at the JCP.

FWIW, the Eclipse Foundation has been an independent not-for-profit for almost four years.

If elected, I will be Eclipse’s representative on the EC, and will be voting based on the Eclipse Foundation’s independent view of what is best of the Java Community. You have to remember that once you are on the board of any entity (from a publicly traded company to your local hospital charity) you are duty bound to act in the interests of that organization. That is a responsibility I take seriously.

On a somewhat related note, since the Eclipse Foundation itself has a very large board (~30), I’ve had lots of personal practice in consensus building. I suspect that might be of some use at the JCP as well

I hope many of the companies and individuals who are both members of the JCP and supporters of Eclipse will take the time to vote for our community.

Philippe recently asked a question which I think deserves a clear answer:

...is the EPL just a joke, that everybody can ignore?

The answer is, of course, no. We take the Eclipse Public License very seriously.

There have been numerous times when we at the Eclipse Foundation been involved in real or potential license violations of the EPL. As the Agreement Steward for the license, protecting the IP which has been licensed under it is one of our responsibilities.

However, we always initially try to rectify these situations privately and discreetly. To date we have had a 100% success rate resolving misunderstandings following this approach. Including the one that Philippe was hinting at. And that’s really the point: in my experience these are typically misunderstandings, not someone attempting to do something malicious.

So yes, we take the EPL very seriously. Yes, we look into potential issues quickly. But we’ve had good luck using the quiet approach and plan to continue doing so.

BTW, if anyone sees a situation where they think there may be a licensing problem, please let us know at license (at) eclipse.org. We will look into it.

I was very intrigued to learn about the European Union Public License today. Having a government-drafted and supported open source license is breaking new ground as far as I know.

I found in particularly interesting that they drafters selected the Eclipse Public License as one of the licenses they will be compatible with. That is a wonderful endorsement of the EPL, and a recognition of Eclipse’s adoption in Europe.

I wonder if the European Commission will be seeking OSI approval?

We are just a few weeks away from our second annual Eclipse Summit Europe event. Last year’s event was an outstanding gathering of the Eclipse community, and I am definitely looking forward to this year’s as well.

ESE is a little bit different from EclipseCon, and in some ways even more ambitious. In addition to keynotes and talks, it also adds in workshops and symposia, which provide an opportunity for conversations, rather than the more typical one-way dialogue you get with a talk. Last year’s symposia were very well received, and I expect even more from this year’s.

With great keynotes from Erich Gamma of IBM and Eclipse fame, and Jörg Sievert from SAP Ventures we have something for both the technical and the business audience.

So, if you haven’t already registered, please do. It’s going to be a great community event.

See you there!