Alright, this is pretty shameless but...
I am collecting the BEA cards in Eclipse Poker. Will trade a Jack or King of hearts. Comment below as to what you've got that you're willing to trade (BEA only please).
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Friday, March 7, 2008
e4 Is News To Me Too
Just read about the entire e4 debacle (thanks Doug Schaefer). I don't have a whole lot new to say other than I completely agree with Doug Gaff and Doug S on this one (see the thread on the planning council mailing list for details). The fact that that this has been done totally below the radar really irks me to put it mildly.
An interesting point for me to make though, is that those of us in IBM aren't really any more in the loop than the rest of you. Other than some vague "we're thinking of doing an Eclipse 4.0 and thinking about what that might look like" comments (which really weren't at all surprising and didn't really tell me anything that I would consider super-secret advanced knowledge), I haven't heard diddly about any of this e4 stuff. I'm just as blindsided as the rest of you, and I actually interact with folks on the platform occasionally. I have no more clue about e4 than what was in the component announcement.
For the record, the people on the platform are good people (some of them are even my friends). They certainly don't mean ill to anyone, and that certainly includes the Eclipse community. They do not sit in their Evil Eclipse Platform Lair, wringing their hands and cackling maniacally while they try to figure out the next way to thwart openness and diversity. They want to be open and diverse, they really do. Some of them really try very hard to be, and some of them are doing a good job of it (kudos to the platform debug team particularly!).
But, I have to be critical here. A lot of them just don't seem to get it when it comes to this whole open/transparent/diverse thing. I think it's good that a call for participation is being made now, but with all due respect, this shouldn't be the first time we're hearing about all this. What is this e4 thing? Where were the discussions that led up to this? Who participated? What requirements went into it? How were requirements solicited? Did you do a requirements doc? A design doc? Were those documents reviewed with community? Any meetings? Conference calls? Could people join those calls? Where are the minutes? These are all things I've ranted about on this blog before, but I haven't seen a whole lot of progress.
The perception is that once again the IBM skunkworks went off and did its thing, their reasons known only to themselves, and are now just presenting us e4 as a fait accompli. I don't believe that to actually be true, and I very much believe that they're open to participation going forward. And to be honest, I'm going to make a bit of a leap of faith here and assume that whatever e4 is, it's not going to annihilate our Eclipse universe as we know it and doom us all. They platform people are very smart, and they value the community greatly.
However, people need to take some ownership here and acknowledge that there is a PROBLEM. The entire process that led us up to this point was closed. THAT is the problem that we need to solve. Until the Platform starts opening up their process, the Platform will never truly be open. And that's a problem for all of us, whether you work for Big Blue or not. The lack of openness hurts people in IBM like me just as much as the rest of you.
At any rate, I hope the powers that be use this as a learning experience.
An interesting point for me to make though, is that those of us in IBM aren't really any more in the loop than the rest of you. Other than some vague "we're thinking of doing an Eclipse 4.0 and thinking about what that might look like" comments (which really weren't at all surprising and didn't really tell me anything that I would consider super-secret advanced knowledge), I haven't heard diddly about any of this e4 stuff. I'm just as blindsided as the rest of you, and I actually interact with folks on the platform occasionally. I have no more clue about e4 than what was in the component announcement.
For the record, the people on the platform are good people (some of them are even my friends). They certainly don't mean ill to anyone, and that certainly includes the Eclipse community. They do not sit in their Evil Eclipse Platform Lair, wringing their hands and cackling maniacally while they try to figure out the next way to thwart openness and diversity. They want to be open and diverse, they really do. Some of them really try very hard to be, and some of them are doing a good job of it (kudos to the platform debug team particularly!).
But, I have to be critical here. A lot of them just don't seem to get it when it comes to this whole open/transparent/diverse thing. I think it's good that a call for participation is being made now, but with all due respect, this shouldn't be the first time we're hearing about all this. What is this e4 thing? Where were the discussions that led up to this? Who participated? What requirements went into it? How were requirements solicited? Did you do a requirements doc? A design doc? Were those documents reviewed with community? Any meetings? Conference calls? Could people join those calls? Where are the minutes? These are all things I've ranted about on this blog before, but I haven't seen a whole lot of progress.
The perception is that once again the IBM skunkworks went off and did its thing, their reasons known only to themselves, and are now just presenting us e4 as a fait accompli. I don't believe that to actually be true, and I very much believe that they're open to participation going forward. And to be honest, I'm going to make a bit of a leap of faith here and assume that whatever e4 is, it's not going to annihilate our Eclipse universe as we know it and doom us all. They platform people are very smart, and they value the community greatly.
However, people need to take some ownership here and acknowledge that there is a PROBLEM. The entire process that led us up to this point was closed. THAT is the problem that we need to solve. Until the Platform starts opening up their process, the Platform will never truly be open. And that's a problem for all of us, whether you work for Big Blue or not. The lack of openness hurts people in IBM like me just as much as the rest of you.
At any rate, I hope the powers that be use this as a learning experience.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Security And The Eclipse Board Elections
So, I just voted in the Eclipse Board elections. I encourage everyone entitled to a vote to do the same.
I'm not feeling the greatest about the security of the whole thing though. My password to login to the voting system was sent via email, which is not a very secure protocol given that the contents are sent out in the clear. Why couldn't I just login using my SSH credentials, which are relatively secure? Granted, the likelihood that someone is sniffing committers' email in an attempt to fraudulently login and rig the board elections is pretty low, but it's the principle of the thing.
Even worse, was that after I voted, the system told me to expect a confirmation email. Ok, great. Except, the confirmation email contains a listing of how I voted for all the candidates. So much for secret ballots. Oy.
I'm not feeling the greatest about the security of the whole thing though. My password to login to the voting system was sent via email, which is not a very secure protocol given that the contents are sent out in the clear. Why couldn't I just login using my SSH credentials, which are relatively secure? Granted, the likelihood that someone is sniffing committers' email in an attempt to fraudulently login and rig the board elections is pretty low, but it's the principle of the thing.
Even worse, was that after I voted, the system told me to expect a confirmation email. Ok, great. Except, the confirmation email contains a listing of how I voted for all the candidates. So much for secret ballots. Oy.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Toronto DemoCamp tonight!
Just a reminder that the Toronto DemoCamp is tonight. Come out to see some cool Eclipse demos, talk to other Eclipse enthusiasts (and committers!), and have some free refreshments.
And yes, the weather is a bit crappy today, but we're still on! The snow is supposed to stop this afternoon.
Hope to see you at DemoCamp!
And yes, the weather is a bit crappy today, but we're still on! The snow is supposed to stop this afternoon.
Hope to see you at DemoCamp!
Thursday, November 15, 2007
One Week Till Toronto Demo Camp
We have some cool demos lined up:
- Marcelo Paternostro, EMF: Building an Ecore model and seeing what EMF can do with it
- Mike Kucera, CDT Using Parser Generators To Build CDT Parsers
- Shaun Smith, Eclipse Persistence Services (EclipseLink) & Dali JPA Tools--Object/XML and Object/Relational mapping in Java
- Eugene Kuleshov, Task management and team collaboration with Eclipse Mylyn (Mylyn)
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Paintball, The "Other" Planet Eclipse, and A Humble Request
The other day a bunch of us here in the lab went out paintballing as a sort of team-building event. Little did the poor saps know that I used to play every single weekend, have all my own gear, etc. Needless to say the other team was frequently punished by the steady rain of purple paint from my tricked out Classic Automag .68 hammering down upon them. Muwahahah.
Oddly enough, going out with my co-workers has bitten me with the paintball bug again, so when waiting on a build I was checking around online to see how much some of the new markers I like cost. While looking around, I saw for sale a "Planet Eclipse 07 Ego" paintball marker. "There's an Eclipse paintball marker? COOL!!!" Intrigued, I Googled further, and it seems that http://www.planeteclipse.com is the website for the paintball company called (you guessed it) Eclipse that makes this particular marker.
They even have a marker that comes in a cool purplish-blue colour that sort of fits with the theme of our favourite IDE...
So instead of giving away Eclipse mountain bikes this year, how about some cool Eclipse paintball swag? This is way cooler than a mountain bike...
Here's hoping anyway :-)
Oddly enough, going out with my co-workers has bitten me with the paintball bug again, so when waiting on a build I was checking around online to see how much some of the new markers I like cost. While looking around, I saw for sale a "Planet Eclipse 07 Ego" paintball marker. "There's an Eclipse paintball marker? COOL!!!" Intrigued, I Googled further, and it seems that http://www.planeteclipse.com is the website for the paintball company called (you guessed it) Eclipse that makes this particular marker.
They even have a marker that comes in a cool purplish-blue colour that sort of fits with the theme of our favourite IDE...
So instead of giving away Eclipse mountain bikes this year, how about some cool Eclipse paintball swag? This is way cooler than a mountain bike...
Here's hoping anyway :-)
Friday, October 5, 2007
BeerClipse Meetings?
I just read Ian's blog about demo camps.
An interesting thought.
In addition to this sort of one-time thing, perhaps we could do something like the 2600 meetings. Set a standard time, like the second Friday of the month or something like that, to be the standard day for meetings. Then, people could locally organize their own meetings at that time at their local foodcourt/pub/whatever.
The 2600 meetings range from organized events with actual agendas and presentations, to informal "let's show up and shoot the breeze about hacking" meetings. The nature of the meeting is up to the organizers.
I think you could do something similar for Eclipse and have it be pretty successful. If nothing else. the promise that committers will be there will definitely draw in the user and contributer community because they'll want to corner us and ask questions. And if they don't show, there would always be stuff that we committer folk could talk about amongst ourselves over some frosty beverages.
What do people think about this idea? Would you participate on a regular basis?
An interesting thought.
In addition to this sort of one-time thing, perhaps we could do something like the 2600 meetings. Set a standard time, like the second Friday of the month or something like that, to be the standard day for meetings. Then, people could locally organize their own meetings at that time at their local foodcourt/pub/whatever.
The 2600 meetings range from organized events with actual agendas and presentations, to informal "let's show up and shoot the breeze about hacking" meetings. The nature of the meeting is up to the organizers.
I think you could do something similar for Eclipse and have it be pretty successful. If nothing else. the promise that committers will be there will definitely draw in the user and contributer community because they'll want to corner us and ask questions. And if they don't show, there would always be stuff that we committer folk could talk about amongst ourselves over some frosty beverages.
What do people think about this idea? Would you participate on a regular basis?
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