SpringSource Annnounces New Application Server Based on Equinox

SpringSource has just launched a new application server, called SpringSource Application Platform, that is based on Equinox, Tomcat and Spring.  The key thing is that it is not a Java EE application server but one that has been designed for modular development and deployment.

InfoQ has a good write-up about the announcement and Dana Blankenhorn has provided some coverage.   It will be interesting to see how this announcement is received in the Java community.  The Spring guys have a great reputation and community, so it will definitely get attention.

Of course this is great news for Equinox and OSGi; lots of innovation coming for this platform.

JavaOne Pavilion Passes

I have some JavaOne Pavlion passes to give away.  If anyone wants a pass to access the exhibit hall, please send me an e-mail.  (ian at eclipse dot org.)

Eclipse Sessions at JavaOne

JavaOne is in two weeks.  Once again, the Eclipse Foundation will have a booth, be giving away Eclipse t-shirts and having our party at the Thirsty Bear. Besides free Eclipse SWAG and beer, there are also some interesting Eclipse related sessions at JavaOne:

• The Many Moons of Eclipse, Tuesday, May 6 12:10pm – 1:10pm (TS-5040)
• Introducing eBay’s Scalable Innovation Platform, Tuesday, May 6 3:20pm – 4:20pm (TS-7550)
• Developing JavaTM Persistence API Applications with the NetBeansTM IDE and EclipseLink Tuesday, May 6 4:40pm – 5:40pm (TS-5400)
• Developing and Supporting a Plug-in for Eclipse, the NetBeansTM IDE, and IDEA
  Tuesday, May 6 8:30pm – 9:20pm (BOF-5193)
• The NetBeansTM Platform Compared to the Eclipse Rich Client Platform
  Thursday, May 8 9:30am – 10:30am (TS-4895)
• Using a QVT Approach to Automate a UML2 to J2EE Transformation
  Thursday, May 8 9:30am – 10:30am (TS-7466)
• Mylyn: Code at the Speed of Thought
  Thursday, May 8 10:50am – 11:50am (TS-6421)
• Open Source Development Tools for the JavaTM Platform, Enterprise Edition, Web 2.0, and SOA
  Thursday, May 8 4:10pm – 5:10pm (TS-7479)
  Friday, May 9 2:50pm – 3:50pm (TS-7479) **** I wonder if this is an error since it has two time slots but the same session id?
• Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, Friday, May 9 1:30pm – 2:30pm (TS-5555)

btw, whomever designs the JavaOne conference site should really think about making it easy to link directly to the sessions. I tried but it didn’t really seem possible.

Ganymede Launch Plans

I am starting to work on the launch plans for Ganymede.   I have a lot of respect and admiration (especially their graphics) for the way Mozilla promotes Firefox, so it was great to see Paul Kim blogging about their plans for Firefox 3.

I agree with Paul, that having a mix of traditional pr activities and grassroots outreach activities is important.   For the Ganymede launch we will do some traditional pr outreach and for grassroot outreach we are planning a new series of Demo Camps, a blogging network similar to last year and I hope a series of videos about each project.   What else should we be doing to launch Ganymede?

btw, if anyone wants to help with graphics for Ganymede, we have opened a bug to solicit ideas.

Does Open Source Participation Open Career Opportunities?

A blog post on CIO.com is making the point that participation in an open source project can help kick-start your career.  I often find that individual developers like to work on open source projects, since it is fun and even ‘cool’.   The ability to get peer recognition and immediate feedback can be a great motivator.

Howewer, I had not thought about the aspect of corporate career progression.   Does anyone have good or bad experiences their participation in an open source project helping their career?

Ganymede M6 Packages now available; plus new packaging download page

The EPP project has made available the Ganymede M6 packages. These are being made available via the new packaging download page. It would be great to get feedback on the packages and the new packages download page. Speak now; Ganymede is just 10 weeks away.

Open Source Census

Openlogic has launched a new initiative called ‘The Open Source Census‘.   Usage data for open source projects is difficult to obtain, so it is great to see OpenLogic take on this initiative.   I will be interested in seeing how it progresses.

There are two ways the Eclipse community can participate: 1) contribute your own ‘scan’ report to include what you use in the census, and 2) Eclipse projects can contribute and keep up to date ‘fingerprints‘ about their Eclipse project.  There are already some Eclipse project fingerprints included but it is certainly not a complete set.

Eclipse Party at JavaOne

JavaOne is just around the corner; in less than 3 weeks. Once again we are organizing an Eclipse party on the Wednesday night of JavaOne. This year it will be at the Thirsty Bear, so if you will be at JavaOne and want to attend please RSVP.

Harvard Open Source Case Study

Harvard Business Review has published a case study titled ‘Open Source: Salvation or Suicide‘? The focus of the case is a fictitious company that is dealing with the pros and cons of open sourcing their gaming platform. It is great to see Harvard paying attention to open source, however it is somewhat disappointing that the case study is not based on a real company. Surely there are a number of companies that would make great open source case studies?

The case includes four responses, including one by Jonathan Schwartz, who proves he understands open source strategy (I would hope so). However, one response was from an IP lawyer who demonstrated a distinct lack on real-world knowledge with quotes like:

“…, open source code comes from an amporphous community of unknown people, and parts of it are much more likely than homegrown software to have been copied from someone’s proprietary code.”

and

“Most software companies, however, are in business to make money, and it is very difficult to make money on open source.”

It has been a long time since I have seen such ignorance of open source software. Either this lawyer is hopelessly out of touch or is spreading fud? Either way it is too bad HBR allowed these types of comments to be published in their publication.

OSGi for GlassFish

The Sun GlassFish team have announced that the upcoming GlassFish v3 release will run on OSGi.   This is great news for the OSGi community and for the GlassFish team.  If I am not mistaken, now all the major Java application servers are/will be running on an OSGi runtime.  It will be interesting to see which OSGi runtime the GlashFish team selects.

btw, the Jetty team also seems to be very committed to providing Jetty as a series of OSGi bundles.

All great news for OSGi.