Yesterday was quietly one of the biggest days ever for Eclipse. That is because of three new project proposals that went live. It’s certainly unusual for us to have three new projects at once, but I’m not sure if it’s unprecedented. However, I am really excited about these projects, and what they mean for the future of the Eclipse community.
- Edje is a new IoT project that brings Java functionality to very small devices. It provides a standard hardware abstraction Java API required for delivering IoT services that meet the constraints of small, Arduino-class devices. The initial code contribution for Eclipse Edje is coming from MicroEJ, who has been working in this area for many years.
- IoT Connector provides a generic, cloud-based IoT platform architecture which supports the implementation of IoT solutions requiring device connectivity, device management, and interaction with business applications. The Eclipse IoT Connector project is targeting numerous runtimes such as Cloud Foundry, RabbitMQ and AMQP, and Docker. It is co-led by Bosch and Red Hat, two of the Eclipse Foundation’s Strategic Members.
- OMR aims to provide a technology platform for building language runtimes. It consists of core components that can be used to build runtimes for languages such as Ruby and Python. These components include: memory management, threading, platform port (abstraction) library, diagnostic file support, monitoring support, garbage collection, and native Just In Time compilation. Eclipse OMR is led by the same folks who build the IBM J9 Java virtual machine.
Several years ago we decided that the Eclipse Foundation was going to start welcoming projects outside of our original comfort zone of tools based on Java and OSGi. It has taken a while to get that message out, but it is clear that it is starting to be heard. None of these project are tools in the traditional Eclipse sense. They are runtimes and frameworks targeting environments from the smallest microcontrollers to the largest clouds.
Each of these projects are very ambitious in their own right. To have all three launched on the same day is crazy cool. I am really looking forward to watching these grow and mature as part of the Eclipse community.
EclipseCon North America March 7-11 in Reston, VA will be the place to be to find out more about these new projects. We’ll have talks on all of them.
