Thank you for the support

It has been just over 2 weeks since we open the Friends of Eclipse donation system. I would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to make a donation and show their support.

Today we had a special donation of $500 from David Lynch. In his comment David states ‘With great appreacition to the EMF folks who answer our ceaseless questions with great care.’ What a great way for someone to recognize the efforts of Ed Merks, Nick Boldt and the entire EMF team. Congratulations!

btw, I have been surprised there hasn’t been more donations in the $5-$10 range. Based on the contributions people make to wikipedia I was really expecting to see more in that range. I know resources can be tight, so please don’t feel you have to donate $50+; $5-$10 would be appreciated too.

Bug Labs Use of Eclipse and OSGi

Bug Labs is a company I have been watching over the last couple of months.  Besides having a great name, they are building a platform for consumer electronics using OSGi for the runtime and Eclipse for the SDK.  They just announced their Eclipse based SDK, Dragonfly is now available.

It is great to see them use OSGi as their component runtime platform and another great example of the power of OSGi.    It looks like they are using the Concierge OSGi  runtime but I wonder how easy it would be to also use Eclipse Equinox?

btw, Ken Gilmer from Bug Labs are also doing a session at the OSGi DevCon, held in conjunction with EclipseCon.   It will be interesting to see what they have to present.

Boeing’s code contribution to OSEE

The Eclipse Open System Engineering Environment (OSEE) project is one I have been interested in watching. Of particular interest is the fact it is being led by a group of engineers inside Boeing. In my opinion, I think the next wave of open source projects will involve non-traditional ISV’s, companies like Boeing, building industry specific frameworks. Who better to led a system engineering framework project than a group that designs software for aircraft manufacturing?

Therefore, it is great to see that OSEE now has code available in the repository. Also, check out the extensive set of screencasts to help people learn about OSEE. Seems like they are off to a great start.

Nominations now open for the Eclipse Community Awards

Each year at EclipseCon, the Eclipse Community Awards recognize some of the key individuals and technologies that help make Eclipse such a great community. This year is no different and the nominations for the awards are now open, so we need your help to nominate individuals and technologies. Deadline for nominations is January 25, 2008.

Nominations for individuals is done through a bugzilla entry. There are two categories that are open for nomination: Top Ambassador and Top Committer. The final winner will be determined by a vote of the community. A third category, Most Prolific Newcomer Evagelist, is to recognize the individual that answer the most questions on the eclipse.org newcomer newsgroup.

Nominations for the technology awards is by sending a written nomination to awards@eclipse.org.  The winners of these awards is determined by a panel of judges.  There are 6 categories for technology awards:

1. Best Commercial Eclipse-Based Developer Tool
2. Best Open Source Eclipse-Based Developer Tool
3. Best Commercial Equinox Application
4. Best Open Source Equinox Application
5. Best Commercial RCP Application
6. Best Open Source RCP Application

btw, if you are interested, last years winners and finalist are listed here.

Forrester Report on Release Management

Carey Schwaber at Forrester Research has just published an article on the ‘Best Practices In Release Management‘.  Eclipse, specifically our release trains,  is used as a case study for demonstrating best practices.

btw, I am sorry but the reports are only accessible to Forrester clients.

Interesting Eclipse Products on a Friday afternoon

This week a number of interesting Eclipse based products came to my via Google alerts.   Really does remind one that Eclipse is being used in all sorts of industrys.

• Ambric announced their Eclipse based tools for programming massively parallel processors.   btw, if you are looking for a job in Oregan they appear to be looking for Eclipse people.
• If you want to develop Blackberry applications using Eclipse, the Blackberrry Development Community has the steps for getting started.
• Pervasive has an Eclipse plug-in for their DataRush framework that deals with data integration on multicore platforms.
• Finally, as I mentioned before Cashware is doing an Eclipse-based IDE for their device management software.  They have a demo here.

Happy Friday.  Feel free to leave a comment or send me an e-mail of other Eclipse based products.   Better yet, why not list them on EPIC so everyone can find them.

The Importance of Open Source Project Governance

Michael Dolan has written an interesting commentary on the differences between corporate led open source projects and Foundation led open source projects.    He uses Eclipse, Linux, OpenSolaris and OpenDS as examples.   It is well worth the read.

In my mind Michael has captured the essence of why it is important to understand the governance model of an open source project.  There are two main models emerging for open source projects: 1) Corporate led governance and 2) Foundation led governance.  If you look at the type of governance used by the project, you can explain a lot of the behaviour in the project and the community.

1000 Plugins on EPIC

 We now have 1000 plug-ins listed on EPIC.   This is a significant milestone and we appreciate everyone that has published their products, open source projects and services on EPIC.    I know there are many more Eclipse based products that are not listed on EPIC, so please feel free to add them to the site.

So what was the lucky 1000th plugin?  Xspeaker from Cashware.   Xspeaker is an IDE for the xpeak standard.     A great example of the diversity of the Eclipse ecosystem and especially how prevalent Eclipse is in the device and embedded industry.

OSGi Opens Up Their Membership

It is nice to see that the OSGi Alliance has announced a new free level of membership called Supporter.  Supporters get to participate in the requirements meetings and early access to the specifications.   Hopefully this will allow other organizations and individuals to show their support of OSGi.

Now you can donate to Eclipse

Today, we announced a new program that allows individuals to make financial donations to the Eclipse Foundation. We have hooked up a PayPal account that allows you to use a credit card or PayPal account to make a donation to Eclipse.

We have also started a program called ‘Friends of Eclipse’. For those individuals that donate $35 or more, they will be designated a ‘Friend of Eclipse’ for 12 months. ‘Friends’ will get access to a special mirror site that will hopefully facilitated faster downloads. Friends will also get the privilege of using a special ‘Friend of Eclipse’ logo on their personal blog or web site. Think of it as a friends with benefits…

So why are we doing this? Two main reasons: 1) We at the Foundation would like to do more to support the community, so having additional financial resources will help, and 2) Over the years, people have expressed a desire to make financial donations to show their appreciation and support of Eclipse. This system will now let them do it.

Just to ensure there is no confusion, any donation to the Eclipse Foundation is not considered a charitable donation. Eclipse is not a charity but a not-for-profit organization. Not getting too much into US tax code, this means we can’t issue charitable tax receipts.

This is a new initiative for us, so let us know what you like and dislike. Of course if you like it, I hope you will make a donation and show your support.