The Final Countdown and no waiting in line

We have added the Europa countdown clock to eclipse.org home page.   According to Denis, the plan is to have the downloads live at 9:00amET Friday June 29.   Last year we were 6-7 hours past this time, so it will be interesting to see how close we can get this year.

And for those individuals who are counting down to the availability to that other launch, the advantage of Europa is that you don’t have to wait in line and you can use Eclipse right away. 

Europa Videos with Redmonk

Cote from Redmonk is doing a series of videocasts about some of the Eclipse projects involved in Europa. He is interviewing Eclipse project leaders, as they give a demo of what’s new in their project release. The goal is to combine podcasts and webinars concepts to bring to life what is new in some of the Eclipse Europa projects.

The first two demos are out now. Jeff McAffer demos that new server services in Equinox and Virgil Dodson demos what is new in BIRT. There are three more coming. Of course all of these will be listed on Eclipse Live. If you are interested in keeping up to date, subscribe to the Eclipse Live RSS feed.

This is the first time we have done these types of videos. I am interested in people’s feedback on the concept. Should we do more in the future?

The OSI Needs To Become More Relevant

Last week Michael Tiemann, president of the Open Source Initiative, wrote a blog post saying that the OSI is going to start being more vocal about software vendors claiming to be open source but were not using an OSI approved license. As a refresher, OSI is the organization that approves open source licenses and has a well recognized definition of for an open source license. They also make the claim to own the trademark ‘open source’.

My initial reaction was ‘Great, it is about time’. IMHO, we need a strong organization that protects the term ‘open source’. We need to protect against the watering down of the open source term and I think the OSI is the best organization to lead this effort. However, I was quite surprised by the negative reaction in some of the comments on Michael’s blog and on slashdot. Cote also did an interesting post pointing out that all might not be so happy with Michael’s position.

It seems to me that the OSI might have a perception issue. As Michael admitted they have been taking a quiet approach to enforcing the open source brand, so some might not be aware of the OSI’s good work. So this got me thinking about what does the OSI need to do to become more relevant in a word of public enforcement of the open source term. Let me offer up some unsolicited suggestions:

1) If you are going to be public, be VERY public. Start a public web site that lists organizations that are promoting themselves as being open source but are not using an OSI approved license. Make sure this web site is accessible from the OSI home page.

2) Be better at getting others to promote the OSI brand. I did a quick look at the web sites of organizations that have OSI-approved licenses. Apache, Eclipse, Free Software Foundation, Mozilla - none of them make it obvious that they use an OSI approved licensed.

3) Start educating people on the OSI open source definition. I am willing to bet that most people in the software industry can not name more than two characteristics of the OSI open source definition. You need to start changing this and make it relevant to people.

4) Be consistent and be ruthless. Start a campaign to correct people that misuse the term open source. Start with the press and analyst community. This doesn’t have to be done in a negative way but make sure they know you exist and the reason for OSI.

5) Be more inclusive. There are a lot of constituents that have a vested interest in preserving the integrity of the open source brand. Find a way for them to participate as equal members in the OSI. I am glad to see that they are already starting to think about this.

I am glad Michael is taking the OSI down a new path and I agree with him that ‘enough is enough’. We need a strong open source brand and I hope the OSI is up to the task. However, to be successful the OSI is going to have to become a lot more relevant to the greater software industry. I hope they succeed.

Jane, you ignorant ….,

I’ve always wanted to start a blog with that famous line and this recent opinion piece from eWeek, Is Open Source Dying, is a perfect reason. It is clear that the writer is either:

1) Naive about open source software.

2) Writing piffy headlines to get attention.

3) Just got briefed by someone that doesn’t like Linux, ODF and IBM.

Me thinks it is probably all three. Oh well, it would not surprise me if we don’t see more of these types of articles.

Looking for a good mirror in China

As a follow-up to my post about China being our #1 country for downloads, Denis made the point that we have only one mirror in China; thanks to Actuate.

Given, we are getting ready for the Europa release, this would be a great time to add some mirrors in China. Therefore, if anyone knows of a good China mirror, please send them our way or leave a comment with a link and we will try to follow-up.

Ranking Industry Analyst Bloggers

Part of my job at the Eclipse Foundation is to work with the different industry analyst in our space.   We do a lot of work with the guys at Redmonk and I have always been impressed with their knowledge of everything.   Therefore, I was not surprised to see them at the top of this analyst ranking, certainly well deserved.

China is now #1 in Eclipse downloads

Thanks to Donald we are harvesting some pretty interesting information from our download stats. Over the last 6 months we have noticed a gradual uptake in downloads from China. I was expecting that by the end of 2007 China would surpass the USA as being the number one country.

Well it happened at lot faster, it now seems China has become the number one country in terms of Eclipse SDK downloads.

One thing this points to is the importance of a conference like OS Summit Asia. There is a large growing Eclipse community in China, so this conference should be well received.

btw, if you are a project committer what better reason to submit a proposal for a session. A great opportunity to connect with your user community.

Talking to the press about Europa

We are getting ready for the launch of Europa.  Some of the reporters we are talking to have expressed an interest in talking to developers who are planning to use some of the projects in Europa.   Most of the ‘interviews’ will be done via e-mail.   If you are interest in talking to a reporter, send me a e-mail at ian at eclipse dot org.

How big is the Europa release?

In the process of collecting stats for the Europa release I was referred to a really cool web site called Ohloh.net. It essentially collects stats on open source projects. Most of the 21 projects in Europa, last count 16 of the 21, are listed on Ohloh so I built a stack that represents Europa.

So according to Ohloh, Europa has;

• 17 million LOC,
• 290 contributors,
• 5055 person years of effort, and 
• $278,041,377 estimated cost of development.
  

Of course we are missing 5 projects but I think the Platform numbers are high, so I think the 17 million LOC is pretty accurate.  The $278 million number is also a pretty impressive number.

Besides the metrics, I find the concept of a ’stack’ pretty interesting.  It allows people to define what open source software they use and then recommends other software they might want to use, based on other peoples stacks.  An interesting way to determine what is popular and what works together.

If Ohloh does get some traction I think it could be a great value to the Eclipse and open source community.

Help Promote Europa Part 2: Write a Review; Win a Shirt

Thanks to everyone that has linked to the Europa graphic.  It is helpful to getting the word out.

People seem to like the Eclipse shirts, so I thought it might be a good idea to give people another opportunity to win a shirt.  Hence, part 2 of requesting your help to promote the Eclipse Europa release.   All you have to do is write a review of one or more projects in Europa.   It is pretty simple.   We are even going to give away 3 Eclipse jackets to the ‘top’ reviews and a grand prize of a conference pass to EclipseCon 2008 or Eclipse Summit Europe 2007.

See the details here.  Let the reviewing begin.