Eclipse Membership providing bulk of Galileo Bandwidth

A big thanks to all those Eclipse Foundation members who will be providing the bulk of the bandwidth for the Galileo release this year. Their support helps us keep eclipse.org humming fast (as best we can for a release week) and offers users many paths to very fast downloads.

How is this for fast? EclipseSource has implemented Yoxos on Amazon CloudFront which promises to be a very fat pipe. Oracle and Actuate are making use of Akamai for their bandwidth. Moreover, Amazon has generously donated use of their bandwidth to the Eclipse Foundation to help take a lot of pressure off our Mirrors – Thanks Amazon!

That’s not to mention the other dozen (or so) members who have pledged to provide as much blazing bandwidth as they can including Blu Age, Genuitec, IBM, Intalio, Innovations, Itemis, Obeo, Polarion, Sopera and Zend!

Hope everyone has a fast and happy download experience tomorrow!

- Don

Eclipse Summit Europe 2009 Call for Sponsors!

Things continue to go very strong for Eclipse in Europe. So well, in fact, that we already have 16 sponsors lined up for Eclipse Summit Europe 2009! Kudos to Ralph and his incredible Rolodex and hard work.

Mark your calendars -- October 27-29th once again in Ludwigsburg, Germany.

We would love to get to 20 sponsors in time for the CFP process -- if you're interested, please check out our sponsorship page.

- Don

Eclipse Weather Forecast

At an event late last year I ran into a few folks from the LinuxFoundation who told me about their "Linux Weather Forecast". The Linux Weather Forecast is a way to try to capture at a high level some of the major activities and directions of the Linux ecosystem. Given how fluid and dynamic things are, "weather forecast" is a great metaphore. It doesn't need to be written in military precision terminology, can be updated on the fly, yet gives a pretty good synopsis of weather or not you should bring an umberella to work or not.

Hence, we've launched an Eclipse Weather Forecast. The goal is to present some high level information that provides a good synopisis of what's evolving in our own ecosystem. It's meant for both technical and buisness decision makers as a one stop spot to get a feeling of what the new trends are. The forecast will be update periodically as conditions warrant -- and definitely around major/minor release milestones.

Please send and feedback and suggestions to weather@eclipse.org.

- Don

EclipseCon Keynoter Banned from CNBC

You may recall Fake Steve Jobs, who keynoted EclipseCon 2008 last year. Yesterday, he was banned from CNBC for daring to call out a reporter for being "punk'd" by Apple over the last six months regarding Steve Jobs health.

Dan talks for the first minute or so, and then things get interesting at around 3:20.

So, will any of the EclipseCon 2009 Keynoters find themselves banned on CNBC in the following year? I think things are going to be less controversial this year, but you never know ;)

- Don

Draft Roadmap for Review

A draft of the 2008 Road Map is now available. (Link active just during the community review before it's moved to it's permanent home). The road map is a living document which will see future iterations, but a snapshot is recorded each year and labeled.

Please send any comments you may have to 'membership' - at eclipse.org.

- Don

Save the Dates - Upcoming Eclipse Membership Meetings

As the summer holiday season winds down it's time to start planning fall schedules in earnest. Therefore, I wanted to make sure we got on people's calendars ASAP! The membership was pretty clear that these meetings are important but we need to try to line them up with other activities to make travel justification easier - so we've worked hard to that end. Read on!

We're holding an Eclipse New Member Jumpstart and Membership Meeting on Monday, October 27^th in Reston VA. These meetings are conveniently located at the same venue and just prior to EclipseWorld 2008. If you’re going to EclipseWorld, definitely plan on arriving early to attend these meetings for an opportunity to keep ahead of all the happenings in our Ecosystem. And if you're looking for more justification to your Management to go to EclipseWorld, let them know you plan to attend the Members Meeting just prior.

Also, we will be holding our first ever Members Meting and Jumpstart in Europe on November 17^th in Ludwigsburg, Germany. These meetings are conveniently located at the same venue and just prior to Eclipse Summit Europe. I hope we have a really strong turn out and strong involvement so we can make this an annual meeting. Given all the new members coming from Europe, I have no doubts it will be. Again, the correlation with ESE will hopefully help justify the trip and vice versa.

Full details on agenda, participation and how to RSVP for the Members Meeting will be emailed later in September.

- Don

Comparing "Global Wine Wars" to the Embedded and Mobile space

One of my favorite MBA case studies was "Global Wine Wars: New World Challenges Old" (don't be cheap, spend the $6.95 and read it...). The key point from the case is that to compete against France's dominance in the wine industry, Australia et al repositioned the mindset of wine buyers from region to grape variety. No longer do people go into a liquor store to buy a Bordeaux, they go in to buy a Merlot. You don't go in looking for something nice from Burgundy, you go in looking for a nice Chardonnay. And for a couple of decades now France has been spanked repeatedly in the global markets for wine.

Is something similar going on in the Embedded and Mobile spaces? Is there a slow repositioning happening in purchasing behavior from "region" (the hardware - "iPhone" vs "BlackBerry" vs "Motorazr" vs "Nokia Nxx") to "grape variety" (the software stack - "Symbian Foundation", "Android", ....)?

- Don