Back to Oracle!

Summary: I’ve loved my last five years at the Eclipse Foundation. It’s time for me to move on. I’m going to Oracle to work on OpenJDK and other things.

The longer version:

It was over five years ago that I joined the Eclipse Foundation. I had just finished an MBA and was working at Oracle in a well regarded technical swat team in Java middleware. The Eclipse Foundation had launched in my hometown of Ottawa, and here I was, eager to learn about open source, the rapidly changing business model of enterprise software, ecosystems and to do something fresh. So I took advantage of this unique opportunity and convinced Mike that I should help run the Eclipse Foundation membership.

My 5+ years at Eclipse were incredibly rewarding both personally and professionally. I’ve made countless new friends and acquaintances from all the organizations that I’ve had the pleasure of working with. I was privileged to be working directly with many great thinkers in the software industry, and learning about how big ideas, like Eclipse, happen.

All the staff at the Eclipse Foundation that I’ve ever worked with have been high performing and maniacal about driving the Eclipse Ecosystem forward. I believe the Eclipse Foundation has done great things by helping hundreds of organizations keep pace with evolving business models and to make available a lot of high value free software. I leave the Eclipse Foundation with complete respect and admiration for every single person there. They do incredible things with limited resources and many constraints. I will continue to be a fierce advocate and supporter of all things Eclipse.

I believe strongly that we are at the beginning of a renaissance period for Java. Once again there is real investment and participation in Java. There is a roadmap that has an immediate impact with Java SE 7, and plans far into the future – with many organizations and stakeholders keen to see it happen. Moreover, I’m convinced that once a world class modularity solution becomes part of core Java, we will see even more and faster innovation. It means great things from the biggest cloud, to the smallest device.

I have a matching skill set to help Java evolve for the decade to come, so I decided to jump at an opportunity to join the Oracle Java SE team. I will be working with OpenJDK and other things. I am truly proud to be working with folks like Dalibor Topic, Henrik Staal, Mark Reinhold and Adam Messinger.

The team I’m on has one simple mandate – keep Java the number one computing platform in the world. Period. I start May 9th, and will post some pointers when I land.

- Don

Announcing EclipseCon Europe 2011, and EclipseCon North America 2012 Program Chair

As I mentioned this morning at EclipseCon, we're proud to announce EclipseCon Europe, 2011. New name, but same great conference. We wanted to demonstrate the equal importance of both our major events, and decided to unify on the "EclipseCon" brand. Bernd Kolb will be reprising his role as Program Chair and we hope he makes great use of the extra space. We sold out early last year, so plan to register early to avoid disappointment!

Also, we'd like to announce Doug Schaefer (CDT Project Lead) as the Program Chair for EclipseCon North America 2012 (exact dates and location TBA). We've had an excellent run of great Program Chairs who put their own touch on EclipseCon and we're looking forward to Doug's perspective and leadership.

- Don

EclipseCon QR-CodeBreakers Game

The fun diversion game at EclipseCon this year is EclipseCon QR-CodeBreakers. Grab a QR Code Scanner for your favorite mobile device before the conference to make sure you're ready to play.

Once again there will be some great prizes for those playing along including an XBOX 360 courtesy of Microsoft, and Droid Pro (Global capable) courtesy of Motorola and a bevy of Amazon Gift Certificates courtesy of the Eclipse Foundation.

Full details of the game can be found on the EclipseCon website. Not sure what you're looking for? Here's a sample QR-Code, how many can you find at EclipseCon?

- Don

Did I mention EclipseCon is four days?

I'm pretty sure I did last year, but it bears repeating - EclipseCon is a four day conference. The reason I point that out is that many conferences are 2.5 or maybe a full three days, but we take full advantage of bringing hundreds of people from around the world and pack the week. You won't want to roll in and miss Monday morning (some of the best Tutorials start then), and you won't want to leave early on Thursday and miss the closing sessions.

EclipseCon starts in just 2 weeks, register today!

- Don

Eclipse RoadMap v6 for Review

Version 6 of the Eclipse Roadmap is ready for community review and feedback. It is currently scheduled to be discussed and approved at the March 21st board meeting in Santa Clara. Please feel free to send any feedback via email, my first.last at eclipse.org.

- Don

...and Amazon make an even Eight.

I'm very pleased to note that Amazon has gone gold at EclipseCon, making us an even eight for EclipseCon 2011.

Amazon joins Cloudsoft, IBM, Jasmine Conseil, Oracle, SAP, Sonatype and Xored as Gold Sponsors.

The Silver sponsor list is impressive as well as we have Birt Exchange, Amazon Web Services, BSI, Google, Nuxeo, OnPositive, BlackBerry and ZeroTurnaround. Our Bronze sponsors include AccuRev, Froglogic, Genuitec, GitHub, Itemis, JBoss, Juniper, Microsoft, Paremus, Soyatec and TOTVS.

We can't give our sponsors enough thanks and kudos - without them, EclipseCon would not be possible and I look forward to seeing them and learning the cool things they're doing with Eclipse!

- Don

EclipseCon Keynote #3 - On Jeopardy Playing Computers

The third and final EclipseCon keynote is confirmed, it will be David Gondek, from the IBM Watson Strategy Team. You may have caught him recently on the Nova Documentary called "The Smartest Machine on Earth". Or on countless blogs and geek shows.

We're thrilled to have David speak -- stay tuned for more details shortly!

EclipseCon is just under 4 weeks away! Register now and save $200.

- Don