Life at Eclipse

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.

Last year for the Eclipse Community Project Spot Light panel, we collected questions from the community to ask the PMC leaders. If you would like to provide us with a question, please do one of the following:

1. Add it as a comment to the talk.
2. Send me an email at mike at eclipse.org
3. Write it on a piece of paper and give it to me when I’m wandering around. You can likely find me at any reception offering free beer 🙂

Last year’s panel was a lot of fun, largely because of the great questions from the community. Please take a moment to contribute.

So here are my personal EclipseCon 2006 highlights so far:

1. The Sun team promoting NetBeans out front. Hilarious! I’m proud to say that I’ve got my full allotment of NetBeans kit: one CD and one bottle of water.
2. Joel Spolsky’s keynote. It’s been a long time since I’ve laughed as much. What a great start to the conference.
3. Watching the woman from Microsoft work on recruiting the RadRails guys who won the Eclipse Award for “Best Open Source Eclipse based developer tool”. She was on them in about 30 seconds flat. Hey Ed, have you been recruited yet?

I have to admit that I really enjoy EclipseCon. OK, so I’ve only been to one of the two so far, but last year really was a killer conference. As of last night we were just about at 1200 registrations, so we know for sure that this year’s event is going to be an even bigger group.

But as good as the program is, the real reason I enjoy EclipseCon is just seeing everyone and getting caught up on what folks are working on. By far my favourite activity is wandering around just chatting with people. (Actually that’s my favourite part of any conference.) The Eclipse community is just such a fun place to be, and EclipseCon is where you get to see it all in one place.

So if we bump into each other at EclipseCon, please say “hi”.