Call for Community Feedback on an Updated Eclipse Logo

In January we started a process to determine if we should update the existing Eclipse logo.   As I have said before, the existing logo is great but it was created 8-9 years ago and maybe deserves an update or modernization.   The response to a call for new concepts has been outstanding.  We had over 200 concepts submitted but have narrowed the potential choices to 10 concepts.

Now we need feedback from the community to help with the decision making process.  We are going to organize two rounds of community voting: Round 1 will be to choose from the 10 nominees a short list of 3 concepts and Round 2 will be to select a final concept.  Changing the logo is a big deal for the community and a big deal to implement, therefore, the final decision will be made by the Eclipse Foundation.

Some people have already expressed an opinion that we should not change the logo.  I want to be clear that a perfectly acceptable outcome is that we keep the same logo.  Therefore, on each round of voting the existing Eclipse logo will be included.   If you don’t want to change the logo, make sure you vote for the existing logo.

Voting for Round 1 is now open.  If you have an opinion, please go express it now.  Vote based on the concept you like.  I fully expect any new concept will need refinement and tweaking before it is finished.  In fact, on the poll you can recommend the refinements you would like to see on the concept of your choice.

Deadline for Round 1 voting is Wednesday, March 3 at 3pmET.

Expanding Community Participation

Millions of individual and thousands of organizations are part of the Eclipse community as users, contributors, committers, adopters, researchers, students, etc, etc.  Unfortunately, the majority of the Eclipse community is passive.  One thing we are trying to do is make it easier for more people and companies to actively participate in the community.   For instance, we recently introduced a ‘contribute page‘ to make it easier for individuals to understand how they can get involved.

For companies, the bulk of the contributions come from technology companies:  ISV, hardware vendors, consulting companies, etc.  The challenge is how do you make it appealing for more companies, especially large IT organizations that make extensive use of Eclipse but have no obvious way to participate in the community.    At a marco-level there are two ways companies can actively participate: 1) fund committers to work on Eclipse projects, or 2) contribute money to fund the services of the Eclipse Foundation.   Both are important but today we announced the Corporate Sponsor Program to making it easier for companies to donate money to the Eclipse Foundation.

The Eclipse Corporate Sponsor Program recognize companies that donate money or services to help fund the Eclipse Foundation.   Not every company has the ability to fund committers or even become a member of the Foundation.  However, this new program allo companies to contribute back to the Eclipse  community and thus actively participate in the ongoing success.   If you work for a company or know of a company that might be interested in joining the Corporate Sponsor Program, details are available here.

In addition to big companies, we are also trying to make it easier for small technology companies to become members of the Foundation.   In the past, the minimum membership fee was $5000.  This is a significant commitment if you are just starting out or a 1-3 person shop.  As Donald previously announced, the Board has approved a membership tier for companies with less than 10 people and $1 million revenue to become members for a $1500 membership fee.  Companies like ModularMind and ANCiT Consulting who have recently joined the Foundation.

We still need to do more to expand community participation.  There are lots of other things that we will continue to implement to make it easier.  For now, if you know any companies, large and small, that would like to grow their participation please send them our way.  If you have any ideas on how to make it easier to participate at Eclipse, for companies or individuals, please let us know.

The Robots are Coming to EclipseCon

Jeff Norris from the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab is one of the keynotes at EclipseCon 2010.  Jeff is a great speaker and typically has lots of really cool videos of robots in his talk, so I am expecting his keynote to be a highlight of the conference.

Jeff is also a great Eclipse community member.  Late last year he approached us about making an even bigger impact on EclipseCon.   He wanted to help the Eclipse community promote Eclipse e4 by creating a programming contest that required attendees to use e4 to build a command and control system to drive a real robot.

Fast forward to today and we are announcing the e4-Rover Mars Challenge.  Expect something a bit different this year at EclipseCon.   In the registration area, we are going to have a LEGO Mindstorm robot setup in an arena that might look a bit like Mars.   Thanks to Jeff’s team at NASA, Boris Bokowski and some of the other e4 committers, attendees will be able to drive the robot around a course using a client application written in e4.    Participants will collect points for completing the course and compete for high score.  Attendees will be encourage to extend and improve the e4 client so it is easier to collect more points and get a higher score.  The cool thing is that this will all be controlled by an Equinox server hosted in the cloud on Amazon Web Services.

Of course we also have some very cool prizes.  The grand prize winner will get a chance to visit the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in Los Angeles, CA.  Jeff and his team have agreed to give a tour of their labs, so it should be a fascinating trip.  We will also have some LEGO Mindstorm robots to give out to the winners.

A big thanks to Jeff and the NASA team, plus a number of the e4 committers for creating the contest.  This will be a great way to introduce developers to e4.

btw, EclipseCon starts in under 4 weeks so don’t forget to register today.

The Importance of Big Data and Eclipse

Stephen O’Grady of Redmonk has written extensively on the rising importance of data, especially large amounts of data, in the IT industry.   Stephen is usually right about these types of trends so I have started to look how this might impact the Eclipse community.

Predictably, we are seeing some early vendors making it easier for developers, especially Eclipse developers, to integrate big data analytics into their applications.   For instance, Aster Data has just announced an Eclipse plug-in that is an integrated visual development environment for building MapReduce and SQL-based analytic applications.  btw, it is also nice to see that Aster Data has recently become a member of the Eclipse Foundation.

This InfoWorld article ‘Databases primed for social networks‘ also led me to Neo4j database which has the Neoclipse Eclipse plugin for visualizing social networks within Eclipse.

Time and time again, developers lead the acceptance new technology.   Tools that make it easier for developers to embrace large amounts of data will surely make Stephen’s predictions come true.

Lots of Logo Designs to Choose From

Wow, we have received over 200 concepts for a new Eclipse logo.  Some I really like, some are just ugly.  🙂   Now we need to start narrowing the choices so we can make a decision.

We are going to do two rounds of community voting to determine if it makes sense to update the existing logo.   The first step is creating a list of 10 concepts for the first round of voting.     The list of 10 will be narrowed by community vote to a list of 3 for the second round.  The second community vote will determine a potential selection.  Each round we will automatically include the existing Eclipse logo.

I want to be clear that changing the logo is a big deal.  It will be a big deal for the community and the actual implementation alone is a big effort.   Therefore, the EMO (ie. the Eclipse Foundation) will make the final decision on changing the logo.

Now we need your help to determine the list of 10 concepts.   If you have an opinion, take a look at the Gallery and then please nominate 3-5 concepts you like best on this bug.   Please remember, we aren’t looking for a brand new logo, we want something that is an update/modernized look on the original logo.  The deadline for nominations is Tuesday, Feb. 23 at 3pmET.

btw, when you are looking at the Gallery, you can enlarge each concept by clicking on the magnify glass.

Editor Choice Award from Intelligent Enterprise

It is always nice to be recognized with industry awards, so I take great pleasure in the fact the Eclipse Foundation was recognized as a ‘Company to Watch’ but Intelligent Enterprise.   I especially like their conclusion ‘Eclipse is the tail that now wags enterprise software development.’

From Intelligent Enterprise:

Eclipse Foundation has built an open-source community and a powerful ecosystem that continues to revolutionize the way software is created and deployed. At the center is a multi-language software development environment and rich-client deployment platform that is open and highly extensible. Eclipse is the tail that now wags enterprise software development.

Introducing Marketplace Client Project Proposal

Last week we officially proposed  a new Eclipse project to create an client for the Eclipse Marketplace.   As I described late last year, the next step for Marketplace is to integrate Marketplace directly into each Eclipse installation.  We want to make it as easy as possible for Eclipse users to access the huge ecosystem of Eclipse solutions.  This is one step towards an app store for Eclipse.

To make this happen, the Eclipse Foundation has contracted with Tasktop to create the Marketplace client.   In December and January, we had a call for proposals and I am very pleased that we selected Tasktop.   Mik and Steffen from Tasktop, plus David Green and Thomas and Hendrik from Cloudsmith will all be contributing to the effort.   I am going to be the project leader and help manage the project.

The project has a very aggressive schedule and our hope is to have the Marketplace Client (MPC) available in the Helios packages.   I do believe the MPC will be a great addition for the Eclipse community.   Please feel free to leave feedback here or on the Community Forum.

OSGi + Cloud = ?

It goes without saying Cloud Computing is a very popular topic in the tech industry.  Beyond the marketing hype, cloud computing is changing the way applications are built and deploy.  As most people know, OSGi is the component standard used by Eclipse and has many implications for deploying Eclipse-based applications.

We need to make EclipseRT,  and in general Java, easier to deploy to the cloud but also look to enhance cloud computing based on the benefits of Eclipse and OSGi.  Therefore, I was excited to see Peter Kriens from the OSGi Alliance suggest a workshop to explore what it means to combine OSGi and cloud computing.

The workshop is an all day affair on Thursday, March 25 at EclipseCon.   The goal is to bring together cloud experts and OSGi experts to explore what is possible.   We already have people from Rackspace, Cisco, SAP, SpringSource, some OSGi gurus and I was please to be introduced to the jcloud project, who’s leader will attend.

We need more people, especially the cloud experts, to participate in the workshop.  If you are such an expert or know someone that is, please feel free to send them to Peter or myself.

JavaOne Call for Papers

One of the first things Oracle announced after they completed the Sun acquisition was that JavaOne would continue but in September  (in parallel to Oracle’s existing user conference).   Lots of people in the Eclipse community like to speak at JavaOne, so I thought people would like to know the JavaOne call for papers is now open.   Deadline is March 14.

Designs for an updated Eclipse logo

We are looking at modernizing the Eclipse logo.  I kicked off the process a couple of weeks ago and we received some interesting suggestions.

However, I felt we needed to get more variety and more graphic designers involved, so I started a project on CrowdSpring and offered a $500 bounty.    Good news is now we are getting a lot more designs.

I would like to get feedback and involvement from the Eclipse community.   Unfortunately,  CrowdSpring doesn’t make it easier for comments, so please leave any you have on this Eclipse bug.

February 19 is the deadline for new designs.  After that we will setup a way to select a short list and a final selection.   For those people that like our existing logo, I will be perfectly happy if we stay with the existing logo but I do think we should see if there is something better.   Community feedback now is key.