Blog Posts

Encouraging large enterprises to participate and contribute in open source projects is the next frontier for open source communities. There are lots of examples of companies being happy users of open source technology but sadly very few examples of companies contributing back to those same open source communities. This is...

Last week we launched the Eclipse Community Survey. This is the third time we have done a community survey and each year we learn something new. There are a number of reason I think it is important to do these type of surveys: 1) Any supplier needs to understand what...

Once again we are organizing a new series of DemoCamps for the Eclipse community. During the month of June we will be featuring the Helios DemoCamps to help celebrate the Helios release train. We already have 19 DemoCamps organized, 7 in Germany alone! I’d like to see even more organized...

Crossing the Chasm is one of the classic technology business books that describe how new technology is adopted (or not adopted) by the mainstream. The main thesis is that new technology is first adopted by technology innovators and visionaries but for it to be adopted by the pragmatist in the...

This happens with disturbing frequency… An Eclipse user is frustrated. S/he been trying to make something work for a few hours. Maybe even a few days. It’s just not working like s/he thinks it should be. Finally, s/he decides to send me a note. In that note, s/he questions my...

As I have mentioned, we did a beta release of the Marketplace (MPC) client as part of the Java IDE and RCP Helios M6 packages. A critical part of the project is the user interface design for MPC. We want to make sure it kicks ass. Therefore, we are going...

Last year we published the results of our Eclipse Community Survey. It provides an interesting snapshot into how developers use Eclipse and the wider software development community. However, with all survey data the really interesting information is in the trends that begin to appear over a period of time. Therefore...

A while ago, we received a request to take a look at an open letter on the compatibility of the Eclipse Public License ( EPL) and the GNU General Public License ( GPL). This led to a number of conversations with the Free Software Foundation ( FSF) on the topic...

In my last post on EclispeCon 2010 Demographics, someone asked for a breakout by region. I took a quick look at the data and created some charts. In summary: – No surprise that 57% of attendees come from the US,Canada was the next largest at almost 9%, followed by Germany...

I have never liked the term ‘Open Source Company”. It is an attempt by a few to hijack the open source label for essentially marketing and maybe financing (venture capitalist) purposes. Let me be clear, I have no problem with companies actively participating and promoting open source as part of...