Life at Eclipse

There has been a flurry of articles and blogging today regarding the process by which Sun will release Java into open source. I believe that this is a topic of specific interest to the Eclipse community, given our basis in open source and extensive use of Java.

Apparently yesterday Sun announced a roadmap for their eventual open sourcing of Java. They’ve set a goal of having both Standard Edition (SE) and Micro Edition (ME) open source by the end of this year. In my mind, it is really good news that they have committed to making ME open. AFAIK, that had previously been ambiguous.

One element that I find curious is that Sun has talked quite extensively about where they are looking for inspiration on community building. Some examples include this mindmap from Cote’, and this quote from Laurie Tolson, Sun’s vice president of developer products and programs: “On the governance side people want an easy way to contribute and interact. We are looking at the Apache, Linux, Solaris and other governance models. We are still in the early stage of gathering input”. Simon Phipps says “Expect a steady stream of news from now on, as well as an honest desire for dialogue with everyone.”

I hope Rich Green hasn’t forgotten my email address, as I have to admit that I find Eclipse’s conspicuous absence from their lists of examplars to be somewhat disheartening. Especially given what a gift Eclipse has been to growing the Java development community over the past five years. The fact is that an Eclipse Foundation-style model of independent, open governance with no special votes or vetoes for any particular corporation is exactly the model that Java needs to have if it is to be successfully re-invigorated. I really believe that Eclipse remains the very best current example of how a company can set free a community of innovative projects which supports a large and diverse commercial ecosystem. And Eclipse’s dynamic growth since the creation of the Foundation proves that the model works. If it works for Eclipse, why can’t it be a model for Sun and Java?

Back in May at JavaOne I participated in the JavaPro Java Technology Roundtable, where I made the following prognostication:

Mike’s fearless prediction: you’re going to use CDDL, and you’re going to use an OpenOffice, all-Sun governance model, and people will hate you for it. [The “you” in this sentence refers to Sun.]

If you take a look at the list mentioned by Tolson, it seems like other than Solaris the examples they’re looking at are unlikely to get them very far. Emulating Apache is a non-starter. First of all, the Apache style of governance is antithetical to any project under single company control. Secondly, emulating Apache would just be dumb. Don’t emulate it. If you like their approach, just open source Java at Apache. I’m sure that the code contribution would be welcomed by Harmony.

Emulating Linux also seems far-fetched, as it is ultimately a reflection of Linus Torvalds’ benevolent dictatorship. And regardless of any shared god complexes, Gosling is no Linus.

Which leaves us with the OpenSolaris governance model as the likeliest candidate. Note the majority votes held by Sun appointees. Note that it is an advisory board to what remains a Sun-defined and Sun-controlled Sun project, just like OpenOffice and NetBeans. (Let’s ignore the JCP for now.) Contrast that to the Eclipse Foundation Bylaws, which form a legally distinct entity controlled by an independent Board of Directors with a fiduciary responsibility to “…to cultivate both an open source community and an ecosystem of complementary products, capabilities, and services.“

I do totally agree with Simon that it is categorically unfair to “...characterise [the process of open sourcing Java] as an intransigent Sun fighting bitterly against an obviously right social movement…”. But at the same time I do think that it is fair to carefully scrutinize their decisions on the topics that really matter to all of us: licensing and governance.

I wish Sun well in their odyssey. I really hope that they can find a way to establish Java as truly free and independent. But so far I stand behind my prediction.

My lovely and much younger sister works as a paralegal in a Dallas law office when she’s not running triathalons. So one day last week I guess she was bored and typed our not-very-common surname into the US PTO database and found this piece of hilarity. I genuinely had no idea that this thing existed.

I only very vaguely remember reading the patent application. I do distinctly remember the “invention”, which consisted of one afternoon with a couple of guys (particularly Greg Melahn and Sam Ruby) brainstorming ideas on how we could get two very different systems to talk to one another. Not exactly earth-shattering design work.

My recollection is that this stuff never even got implemented, but I could be wrong about that, as I bailed from OTI/IBM in May, 1999.

An astute practitioner of the software art will quickly realize how lame this thing is. I certainly don’t mean to criticize anyone involved in this particular patent. We were all just doing our jobs within the system that exists. But the fact that the US PTO felt that it was worthy of patenting is all the reminder any of us should need as to just how broken the existing system really is.

And the funniest part of all this is……This patent is referenced as prior art by four other patents (6996826, 6883172, 6484311, and 6438744), all issued to (you guessed it!) Microsoft.

Anyone else out there with sinfully funny patents bearing their names that they want to ‘fess up to?

So I’m here at OSCON and having a great time. (If anyone wants to get together here, please call my cell phone 613-220-3223).

During Tim O’Reilly’s keynote he talked about a bunch of cool technologies that he believes are shaping the future of the Web. One that he singled out was OpenFount. It’s an interesting toolset that seriously lowers the bar for building and deploying AJAX applications based on Google’s GWT toolkit.

The cool piece is that their tools (of course) are Eclipse-based. As Jon Udell has already blogged:

…Openfount extends the Google Web Toolkit (GWT), adding support for the S3 API, for XML and SOAP processing, and for cryptography. I’d known that GWT apps are written in Java and then translated into JavaScript, but hadn’t thought about the benefits of that arrangment. One is that you can use the Eclipse IDE, with its robust debugger, to develop your AJAX app.

In my role, I spend quite a bit of time following the various companies and products building on top of the Eclipse platform. That could probably become a full-time job if I let it. There is an enormous amount of energy in the Eclipse ecosystem.

But every once in a while, even I get impressed with the depth and breadth of the products and technologies being built on Eclipse. It really is pretty freakin’ cool.

Being a lazy sort, I use Google news alerts to look for stuff. Here is a sampling of three cool products being built on Eclipse that just came across the wire yesterday:

• In the design automation space, VaST announced its Eclipse-based CoMET6 product. Here’s what they said about why Eclipse was important to their product:
  

  CoMET6 features an Eclipse framework. Eclipse, with strategic developers like IBM, Intel, Nokia and Wind River, is quickly becoming the de facto industry standard development platform and framework for embedded system design tools. Through Eclipse, CoMET6 supports customer-developed and third-party Eclipse plug-ins, allowing tighter integrations with customer-specific design tools and flows.

• In this review of IBM DB2’s latest release, the new Eclipse-based SQL development environment is singled out as a major competitive advantage.
  

  On a whole, DB2 9 has really raised the bar for database development….who can go past the slick new Developer Workbench? With the workbench, IBM should be able to claw back some ground from developers who in the past may have looked past DB2 for a platform that was easier to develop on.

• Last but not least, Eclipse member company LogicLibrary announced an initiative to create a community reporting portal to “…to facilitate the rapid and mutual sharing of report designs and ideas in the fast-growing Logidex community.” The reports “…can be based on a variety of sources, including Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) from the Eclipse Foundation, Crystal and SQL queries.“

Ho hum. Design automation, database development and collaborative community reporting. Just another day in the Eclipse ecosystem.

Sometimes I wonder if I was German in a previous life. I certainly spend a lot of time there, and I always enjoy myself. Seriously, any country that firmly believes that beer and business mix is my kind of place.

Two weeks ago I was lucky enough to be in Germany for an Eclipse Stammtisch. Stammtisch is a great tradition in Germany where a group of people with a common interest regularly get together at a pub to chat over beers. (Of course, this happens in Canada as well, we’ve just never gone so far as to invent a word for it.) As I understand it, the tradition continues even today with local politics. The locals will get together with the town mayor and councillors to hash out the issues.

Ralph Mueller has been organizing a regular Stammtisch in and around Zwingenberg where he lives, and set one up for when I was there. It was a great opportunity to see some old acquaintances and make some new ones. There was also a very nice mix of committers, plug-in developers and supporters.

A lot of the conversation focused on the upcoming Eclipse Summit Europe, and how to best organize it. We had a lot of great ideas and even better, people volunteering to help. That’s probably my next trip to Germany, so I hope to see everyone there in October.

So to Sebastien, Alexander, Michael, Alexi, Hendrik and others: Prost!