• As of the Juno release, Eclipse 4 is going to be the base platform for the Eclipse ecosystem. This means that our download page will only have Eclipse 4.2-based packages. Eclipse 3.8 will also ship as part of the Juno release, but currently there are no 3.x releases planned after that. Although an enormous investment has gone into the backwards compatibility layer for Eclipse 4, it is obviously going to take testing and effort by the Eclipse projects and the many Eclipse adopters to migrate to Eclipse 4.2. So if you haven’t started testing with the Juno builds, now’s the time to start planning for it. Eclipse 4 is a complete re-write of the platform user interface, and brings a lot of value to the ecosystem, including a lot of improved APIs, more flexibility and a refreshed user interface. And its API is 100% binary compatible with the 3.x platform.
• The migration of the Eclipse community to git is going to be a significant event during 2012. Shutting off CVS in December will be a major milestone. And we are almost done getting the Gerritt code review tool up and running for all Eclipse projects. To make all of this happen has been a ton of work by the webmaster team, the IP team, and you, the community. We’re hoping that using git will make it easier for our community to experiment with, and contribute back to Eclipse projects.
• A Common Build Infrastructure for Eclipse projects is a new service we plan to provide for projects at Eclipse. It has long been a complaint that getting builds working and running reliably is one of the biggest PITAs in running a project. The goal of the CBI is to reduce that effort, and to provide a core hosted service on eclipse.org infrastructure that all of our projects can use. As part of the initial proof of concept, we’re tackling the toughest build of all: the Eclipse platform. Admittedly, CBI is going to take a lot of work, but we are actively recruiting for a full-time staff member to manage this, and to act as a resource for our project community. This is definitely one of the biggest and most exciting new services we’ve worked on for our committer community. So please get involved, and provide your feedback and your requirements.
• We will also be launching a new service for members – providing Long Term Support for Eclipse releases. There is a fundamental mismatch between the maintenance window for Eclipse releases and the enterprise products that are built and ship on top. Eclipse release trains at least offer SR1 (September) and SR2 (February) maintenance releases on a regular basis. But an SR2 eight months after a major release is small solace to anyone with a requirement to offer support or maintenance on a product or application for five or more years (as many organizations do).

  As we are rolling this out, it is important to note that the Foundation is not going to be providing support or maintenance directly. Rather, we will work to connect organizations seeking support for Eclipse software with those offering it in order to cultivate a vibrant ecosystem. To help service providers be more efficient and effective, the Eclipse Foundation will provide the infrastructure for the code repositories, bug trackers, build farms, test farms, software signing, intellectual property management, and governance for managing the projects. We will be the trusted organization doing the drudge-work so that others do not have to. In other words, in classic Eclipse style, the Foundation will be acting as an enabler for the ecosystem.

• Orion is going to ship its 1.0 release later in 2012. There is a ton of work still to do, but there is no doubt in my mind that Orion is an important new technology for the Eclipse community – a whole new tooling platform for the web, in the web.
• EclipseCon is moving to Reston, Virginia, just outside Washington, DC. We hope to attract a lot of new attendees from the East Coast. In addition to the new location, we’re also adding an entirely new co-conference: Agile ALM Connect
• And last but not least, we will be creating a number of new Industry Working Groups. IWGs such as Polarsys and M2M are going to be a large focus area for the Eclipse Foundation. But what is an IWG? Basically, they complement Eclipse open source projects with more support from the member companies that are interested in working on them and adopting them.

I see 2012 as a year of significant, and positive, change for the Eclipse community and the Eclipse Foundation. We are certainly not resting on our laurels! I encourage everyone to get involved and contribute to these new initiatives.

Disclaimer: I run an open source foundation, so obviously I have a vested interest in this debate.

First, I would like to point out that Eclipse is absolutely committed to moving to git as fast as we can get there. We’ve even announced a date by which we intend to shut down our previous standard SCM, CVS. At some point we also intend to discontinue Subversion support for Eclipse projects as well.

Many in the Eclipse community know that I was personally a skeptic about the value of adding git. I was worried that having three SCM systems at Eclipse was too many. In addition to the resources required to support three SCMs, this kind of variety can act as a barrier to entry for both contributors and adopters. If folks have to learn multiple SCMs to interact with Eclipse projects, that is a PITA for them. In short, I was resisting change.

Fortunately, there were many good folks within the Eclipse community that convinced me I was wrong. You know who you are. Thank you.

The argument that ultimately swayed me was that git brings a social dynamic to contribution that the other SCMs we used lack. Adopting git is a strategic attempt by the Eclipse Foundation at social engineering. If we can lower the barrier to contribution at Eclipse, then we will make our community stronger and more innovative. That is ultimately the reason why we’re doing this. This has required investments by our IT team, and as we adopt Gerrit we are modifying our processes for IP management as well. We know that you can both use git and do excellent IP management, because we are already doing exactly that.

Next up is to do more work with GitHub to make it even easier for the broader community to fork Eclipse projects and contribute code back. We are consciously embracing the whirlwind.

I would point out that the model we have at Eclipse where we have a professional staff and some resources at the Foundation makes this kind of change easier to do. Once we’ve made up our mind as a community to push in a new direction, we have the people and the resources to make it happen. We’re not always fast enough to please everyone, but we get there.

But is git and GitHub so powerful a force that the Eclipse Foundation should just roll over and die? I honestly don’t think so. There are some unique values that an open source foundation like Eclipse adds to the equation that are absolutely necessary.

The first thing to understand is that what we are trying to build at Eclipse are not simply open source projects, frameworks or code libraries. Our mission is to ship product-ready software platforms that major corporations and enterprises can safely use and distribute in their products. This involves a level of co-ordination and process that goes far beyond what you can do at GitHub.

A small sampling of the core value-add that happens within the Eclipse Foundation and its community would include:

• IP management. Although we often get criticized for being overly focused on the topic, nobody does IP management better than Eclipse. Which is a huge part of fulfilling our mission of delivering product-ready software platforms. Yes, it’s a lot of work, but it is absolutely a core value, and one not easily replicated.
• Predictability. The Eclipse community has shipped its major platform release on time to the day for eight years. Last year’s release was 46 MLOC, so we are talking about a non-trivial amount of code. The processes that we have in place to co-ordinate the activities and release engineering for 60+ projects absolutely require some amount of centralized support.
• Branding and community. The Eclipse brand means something to people. Millions of developers around the world use Eclipse or Eclipse-based products every day. They have confidence in the software and the community that delivers it. Looking inside the community, there is definitely a pride and a sense of community that comes with being part of Eclipse. Anyone who has ever been to an EclipseCon has seen this firsthand.
• Industry collaboration. Obviously GitHub has been wildly successful in fostering community-led open source. However, there are lots of instances where large and conservative corporations are looking at how to get involved in open source. In many cases, their business motivation is to collaborate with other industry players to create shared industry platforms. The kind of work that goes into facilitating these ventures goes far beyond picking a license and starting to hack some code. The processes that organizations like Eclipse and Apache bring to the table for project incubation, development processes, license management and IP contribution management are critical success factors.

At Eclipse we are trying to simultaneously embrace change, while delivering the core values and processes to fulfill our mission of delivering product-ready software platforms. I feel that overall we are doing a pretty good job, and offer more than enough unique value to sustain us for the very long term.

I was particularly happy to see Matt’s recognition of the great work Wayne Beaton has been doing in freshening up our project summary pages (example here) to make it even easier to find information about the past, present and future of each project at Eclipse.

Earlier this week, Vision Mobile published an EU-funded study that gave Eclipse very high marks for its openness. In fact, it rated the Eclipse community as the most open of the eight open source project communities evaluated. You can read a summary of the report on their blog, or download the full report for free in exchange for your email address. You can also read Florian Mueller’s excellent summary on his blog.

I waited to comment on the report until I had a chance to read and digest it. We were obviously very happy to have Eclipse #1, but were frankly surprised that it ranked Eclipse ahead of open source stalwarts such as Linux and Mozilla. As with all such analyses, the methodology determines the outcome. And although I disagree with the approach in a few places, generally I found it consistent and fair. In particular breaking down each community by: access to the code and transparency of decisions, transparency of development, control over the downstream use of the software, and community structure seems pretty reasonable.

I was particularly happy that Vision Mobile’s report also recognized the value of the project summary pages (example here) and of dash.eclipse.org in providing full and transparent information about the projects at Eclipse. The Eclipse Foundation staff and all of the projects put a lot of effort into making all of that valuable information easily available, and it is nice to see that hard work recognized.

We continue to see lots of interest in the Eclipse model of open source development from industry, as you can see from our recent automotive announcement. We truly believe that we have mastered the best practices for openly governed, vendor neutral open source. It is certainly nice to see that recognized in these articles.

Open Forum is a new event that came about after successfully co-hosting the Eclipse Embedded Day and SPICE Days Conference in Stuttgart the last two years. The focus of the event is how open source organizational methods need to be adopted by enterprises. Enterprises which are today confronted by the twin challenges of ever-accelerating demands for innovation, and the fact that it is now largely software which is driving brand value and differentiation amongst consumers. Imagine the difficulty those challenges pose to companies which for nearly a century have prided themselves on mechanical and manufacturing excellence. Organizations like Eclipse offer them an interesting proof point that open source methods can be used to deliver high-quality, innovative software on a predictable schedule. As we just recently showed again when we shipped Indigo.

I am looking forward to this event, as it is well outside my normal open source comfort zone. It will be fascinating to talk with a community grappling with how to apply the lessons of open source to the next wave of innovation in industrial methods.

EclipseCon North America is moving from our long-term home in Santa Clara. We love the location there and the team at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara has been wonderful to work with. But after six years in a row it was time to try something new.

I’m very happy to let everyone know that EclipseCon North America 2012 will be held at the Hyatt Regency in Reston, Virginia. The dates are the traditional last-week-of-March timeslot. March 26th to March 29th to be specific.

For those who haven’t been there, Reston is a suburb of the Washington, DC area with a large software and technology presence. The facility is wonderful, it is close to a major international airport (Dulles, aka IAD) and we’re thrilled with the package that the hotel has offered us. EclipseCon will basically take over the hotel for the week, and I personally love the ambience when our community is in every nook and cranny of the facility. Eclipse 24×7 for four days is really what EclipseCon is all about.

So mark the dates on your calendar and come and enjoy our ninth edition of EclipseCon North America.

One of the key issues that split the Hudson/Jenkins community was how to balance the corporate and community aspects of the Hudson project. Kudos to Oracle for continuing to work on these issues and make, what I believe is the right move for Oracle and for the Hudson community.

By moving the Hudson project to the Eclipse Foundation, Hudson will now be operating in a vendor-neutral, transparent, and not-for-profit organization. This means potential contributors will no longer be required to sign an Oracle contribution license agreement to contribute code. In fact, Eclipse allows you to keep the copyright to your code; the code you contribute remains yours, licensed under the Eclipse Public License (EPL). Furthermore, the Hudson trademark will now be owned by the Eclipse Foundation and held in trust for the benefit of the entire community rather than any particular company. So if you’ve been wary of participating in Hudson because of “trust issues”, the Eclipse model of collaborative development should make things a lot easier. Hudson will now be a truly community-based project.

Oracle has certainly taken some lumps for their handling of open source communities, hopefully they will get the kudos they deserve in this case. In particular, I would like to point out the effort that they have put into seeking the collaboration and support of Sonatype, Tasktop, VMware, Intuit and IBM. Eclipse Hudson is showing immediate signs of growth and diversity.

In our view, Hudson is coming to Eclipse for all the right reasons. The Eclipse community is itself a big user of Hudson, and we all look forward to the growth in momentum, innovation and predictability that will result from this move. With the addition of the Eclipse community processes for development, release and intellectual property management, we’re confident that the Hudson community and ecosystem will be thrilled with Hudson as an Eclipse project.

The Hudson project proposal is now available for review. I’d encourage everyone to provide feedback and welcome Hudson into the Eclipse community.

As a tax payer, citizen and frequent user of healthcare services, I am terribly excited about the idea of a truly open source community creating a free platform for EHR for use around the world. Certainly we could use something like this here in Canada. The ability of open source to provide a worldwide, vendor-neutral software platform that an ecosystem can thrive, compete and innovate upon is unparalleled. Given the dire straits that virtually all modern healthcare systems find themselves in, the potential upside implicit in what the VA is proposing is an incredible opportunity. You can see a good review of the potential in this paper from Carnegie Mellon funded by the VA as it did its due diligence.

The RFP’s main objective is the creation of a “Custodial Agent” to act as the governing body for a VistA community. The interesting challenge ahead for the VA as they create such a body will be to balance their impulse to control, relative to the need for community. The notion of “Control versus Community” is well documented in Matt Aslett’s work from the 451 Group, a nice summary of which has been provided by Henrik Ingo. And frankly, I am very worried that there are a long list of impediments which could cause this initiative to fail.

We all know that governments are by their very nature conservative, and primarily serviced by firms which specialize in knowing how to meet the specific requirements of their complex procurement and management processes. And despite the best of intentions, I struggle to believe that the people and institutions behind this initiative will be successful in establishing a truly vendor-neutral, open, transparent and meritocratic community which can deliver on the vision. Not because of lack of desire, but because of lack of knowledge and the specific skillsets of experienced community development people. You know: the folks who’ve been there, done that and “get it”. I worry that what will come out of this process will be what Matt Aslett called “Stage 3 – Vendor-dominated open source development and distribution project”, except that the “Vendor” here will be the VA and a prime contractor. If that happens, I highly doubt that this initiative will be the success it deserves to be. Or perhaps I’m overly pessimistic, and this is simply a learning stage that the VA and its ecosystem will need to go through. After all, lots of very smart companies made the same errors early in their march towards openness.

To me, the logical solution to VA’s search for a governing body would be to take VistA to a community which already exists, and which already has a clear community-based governance model in place. Reading the RFP, I could not help but think that at least three quarters of the required responses could simply be links to already existing governance, process and licensing documents already here at the Eclipse Foundation. And most of the remaining pieces could be implemented as an industry working group. Too bad VistA is implemented using MUMPS, which is not exactly a mainstream Eclipse development platform.

Certainly our good friends and former colleagues over at OpenHealthTools.org would be a logical fit as well. They have been working in the healthcare domain with a view towards creating an Eclipse-style community for years. And no one knows ecosystem development better than their Executive Director, Skip McGaughey. Surely one of the vendors interested in responding to this will do the sensible thing and enlist their support in their submission?

So this will be a very interesting space to watch. It is incredibly daring for an organization the size of the VA to embrace open source as a strategy. This is a long overdue initiative, as the current mess of software systems and vendors has created the very definition of a gridlock economy in the application of IT to healthcare. I’m impressed with the process that led to the RFP. My fingers are crossed that the stars align to deliver a truly open platform for innovation in healthcare.

The winner of the first ever Eclipse Foundation Lifetime Contribution Award is David Williams of IBM.

David Williams Accepting His Eclipse Lifetime Contribution Award

David has been a member of Eclipse since 2004, is a committer on 10 Eclipse Projects, Project Lead of 3, an active member of the Tools PMC, PMC Leader of the Web Tools Platform Project, and current chair of the Eclipse Planning Council. Above and beyond all that, though, David has helped all of Eclipse by leading many of the yearly Simultaneous Release trains: starting with the very first one, Callisto, setting in motion the vision and basic mechanisms that are still in place. While not the official lead of Europa or Ganymede David was still central to getting them done, on time. Finally, becoming Planning Council Chair during Galileo, he lead it to completion, then Helios, and now Indigo. David has successfully balanced being both mentor and task-master to keep everyone on track, meeting the requirements to form a common software site repository at Eclipse, which in turn is an enormous benefit to all three communities of Eclipse: adopters, users, and committers.

David is without a doubt one of the most highly regarded members of the Eclipse community. He is a tireless worker with a key focus on doing the right thing for the projects. His dedication is remarkable and I was pleased to see his recognition with the Lifetime Contribution Award this year.

I would like to thank IBM for supporting David’s continuing contributions to the future success of Eclipse.

Please join me in congratulating David!

The elected Committer Member representatives for 2011 will be:

• Chris Aniszczyk
• Boris Bokowski
• Ed Merks

The elected Sustaining Member (e.g. Solution and Enterprise Member) representatives for 2011 will be:

• Eric Clayberg (Google)
• Hans Kamutzki (MicroDoc)
• Mik Kersten (Tasktop)

Please join me in extending a hearty congratulations to the winners!

I would also like to extend a warm “thank you” to the other candidates: Tim Barnes, Weber Canova, John Cunningham and Gunnar Wagenknecht.

In addition, I would like to recognize Adam Lieber (Intalio) for the past service he provided to the Eclipse Foundation as a Director. He has has been excellent representative for our community and will be missed.

If you are eligible to vote, you should soon be receiving an email with your voting credentials. If you believe you are eligible, but do not receive credentials, please contact webmaster@eclipse.org.