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With the Eclipse Consortium embarking on leaving the mothership of IBM, and the mainstream press focusing their attention between the huge organizations that are joining, and pitting Sun and Eclipse in battle, I grabbed an opportunity to talk with John Weigand, Eclipse Project Lead, and Skip McGaughey, the present chairman of Eclipse, to talk about how the new organization will affect developers.
Steve: Why should a normal, everyday, developer be excited about the new Eclipse organization?
John: The first thing I can see happening is more contributors. That's what normal developers are going to see.. we'll see broader involvement and were going to get the effects of a professional management organization. So were going to be able to do more coordination between projects. Well be able to scale up the next level, were starting out successful and the next set of opportunities are available with a professional management organization.
Steve: Do you feel that you didnt have that professional management organization when you were attached to IBM?
John: Well, what we had is a open source project and a set of open source projects and they didnt co-ordinate. We did a lot of work as individual projects and this provided us with an opportunity to coordinate and to do much more.
Steve: Is that something that requires these massive organizations to join the consortium?
"... the nature of the problems that are being solved by Eclipse technology become so complex and so much greater than what we had originally anticipated, that bringing in developers from multiple companies with multiple experiences and orientations has tremendous impact on the cross fertilization of knowledge as well as the opportunity to band together to work on problems."
Skip: Steve, probably no, what were really looking to do is to preserve and protect the basic open source paradigm of development. If we wanted to just maintain the initial focus of Eclipse as a simple IDE with an extensibility framework kind of thing then we dont really need to have lots and lots more contributors... lots of companies providing resources, but whats happening is that the nature of the problems that are being solved by Eclipse technology become so complex and so much greater than what we had originally anticipated, that bringing in developers from multiple companies with multiple experiences and orientations has tremendous impact on the cross fertilization of knowledge as well as the opportunity to band together to work on problems.
A good example: some of the test frameworks were initially started at IBM, they then found synergy with a small company in Scotland called Scapa, they then found synergy with some of the OMG activities, they are now finding this synergy with Intel, so its beginning to expand both the knowledge base and the number of people with the skills, so the capability of solving problems is much greater than it would have been under IBMs leadership solely or under a small number of companies.
Steve: A lot of people, I think, might get the perception that the organization is leaving IBM as kind of a way to make sure that theres no meddling.
Skip: I think theres always an inherent conflict when youre an employee of a company and youre also trying to help direct an open source environment and there are a limited number of committers.
Steve: Do you think youd still be able to get the same amount of committers and be connected to IBM?
Skip: I dont see any way you could. The more IBM is independent and demonstrates that independence, the more people, individuals and companies will contribute significantly. IBM is still contributing.
Steve: I read that you are still expecting an eighth of the funding to still come from IBM.
Skip: Thats the administrative side, so thats the tentative budget on the administrative side.
Steve: I just wanted to point out that I think its a great leap of faith for IBM to let this out from underneath their wing.
Skip: Yeah, IBM is betting its business on this, but the total number of developers that IBM is committing is going up and not going down.
Steve: Is that right? That sounds like an under appreciated story.
Skip: Yes, and the total breadth and expansion that IBM is using of their product line, based on Eclipse, is going up tremendously.
Steve: More resources and less control; thats not a usual play for a company is it?
Skip: Its both smart business and its good technology, because the users out there are demanding a platform for tool integration and the problems are so complex that no one company can do that by themselves. So if you have an open environment that multiple companies and multiple individuals and multiple teams can all contribute to, everybody gains.
Steve: So, for the average developer who out there the net result is they are going have a better tool to work with and to build their products with?
"The more IBM is independent and demonstrates that independence, the more people, individuals and companies will contribute significantly. IBM is still contributing."
John: The technology is continuing to improve always. Theres broader involvement and more people will be working on this and making it better.
Steve: Will you still be accepting outside individual contributors?
John: Yes. The technology is going to continue to be developed by an open source project; the open source rules of engagement will continue and will be encouraged.
Skip: So let me give you a couple of concrete examples. The vision of Eclipse, on a technology level, was to have a single platform that multiple vendors would contribute to that could target small devices, like embedded devices, or workstations or mainframes. So its sort of like from the wristwatch to the mainframe. Because of the current number of people that are really engaged in working on this, we're really only able to really optimize in the workstation environment but the technology capabilities are to drive it into the embedded, drive it into the J2EE web services space, to drive it into industry verticals, and that requires lots of people who have those skill sets to contribute.. far more than any one company, even the size of IBM. But, by having that extensible platform, multiple people with specific skill sets would begin to contribute and then the industry benefits.
Steve: Can you give us any specific details on any projects that might be looked at as migrating to Eclipse once this organization has moved over.
Skip: I would point you in the direction of Ericsson. Ericsson is committing the use of Eclipse as an IDE for building their internal applications, and thousands and thousands of their programmers are going to be using it.
Steve: How about Novell? They have just made their Eclipse announcement, ended up being kind of the darling of the recent Linux World, and really seemed to top off all of their announcements with joining Eclipse.
Skip: They are making a strategic decision and investment decision to retool their entire software set.
Steve: Their plan is to move everything to development as well.
Skip: Thats what they say, yes. Then youve got small companies like QNX who have invested heavily and they quickly developed an entire set of tools targeted to the embedded marketplace.
Steve: Have you seen a lot of action in the embedded market so far?
Skip: Its gearing up, its not as robust today as we anticipate being six months to a year from now. But when you have major providers, like WindRiver and companies strong in technology like QNX, youre seeing a tremendous uptake in the embedded space.
Steve: Im wondering if youre being approached by anyone who maybe wants to use Eclipse, or has requests for features, who might make proprietary software on their own, yet cant really be associated specifically with joining an open source group.
"The technology is going to continue to be developed by an open source project; the open source rules of engagement will continue and will be encouraged."
Skip: Under the license, just about any person can take the code for free and redistribute it. And they have to pass out the copyright notice. But theres no attribution that has to be given public or anything else. There are places all over the world that are taking the technology and are using it for ways that are in their best interest, many of them have not been anticipated by us, and we dont even know about them.
Steve: Now a lot of people associate Eclipse specifically with Java.
John: Well it is implemented using Java technology but its actually a tooling platform intended for wide application and although theres Java development tools with it, theres also a C development tooling project that already underway and moving; theres also an effort on Cobol tooling and I expect even broader application over time.
Steve: Do you see anybody getting involved with Eclipse from a different language?
Skip: Yes, Smalltalk. Theres natural language experimentation going on. Really, it gives a solid platform for people who have experience indifferent languages to experiment with it. It provides a solid platform for people who are innovators, like Aspect-J kind of work, to innovate and to have this solid platform.
Steve: Do you think, with the new organization, that people are focusing on the Java or are they looking to expand the use outside of Java?
"...are NetBeans and Eclipse competing as an IDE? Yes. Does the market place benefit from that? Yes. Is there sharing of knowledge. Yes."
Skip: The approach of Eclipse was, in the first two years, to build a base in Java and to begin to develop the C, C++, or the C IDE environment that John was describing; and we see a major emphasis in taking the C and expanding on that to be comparable to the Java. At the same time, rev'ing the Java again so that it can continue to be the award winning choice of IDE across the programming community. That is, we continue to work on Java but also were going to see major emphasis in the C environment and thats necessary for the Linux world. Its also necessary for the embedded world.
Steve: Will the actual transition to the new organizational affect the developer's work?
Skip: No it's separate, they're on their own so the developers will continue on their own. What will happen with the new organization structure is it will continue to evolve to meet the need of the marketplace and commercial side.
Steve: Some people see this as a NetBeans/Sun vs Eclipse battle and the press really picks up on that.
Skip: First, are NetBeans and Eclipse competing as an IDE? Yes. Does the market place benefit from that? Yes. Is there sharing of knowledge. Yes.
Steve: Is Eclipse planning to do everything to take the number one spot as the IDE? Are you going to go after NetBeans's user base?
John: No, we're all about the code. We're trying to build the best technology possible. We want to make it better. We're not engaged in that competitive analysis.
Skip: I would take issue with those terms. We really collaborate, but also compete. I really believe that this is a competing/collaborating environment. Officially, we don't do competitive positioning. We want to be open to anyone including Sun, Microsoft, whoever.
Steve Mallett is the founder and managing editor or OSDir.com. His life can be found here in one light, meaty snack.
Interview: The New Eclipse - What's in it for Developers | Login/Create an account | 1 Comment
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With the Eclipse Consortium embarking on leaving the mothership of IBM, and the mainstream press focusing their attention between the huge organizations that are joining, and pitting Sun and Eclipse in battle, I grabbed an opportunity to talk with John Weigand, Eclipse Project Lead, and Skip McGaughey, the present chairman of Eclipse, to talk about how the new organization will affect developers.