Ottawa is unusually quiet today. People are burrowing in for a winter storm that is coming up from the US. A quote from Environment Canada

A low pressure area over Arkansas is getting organized and setting its sights on southern Ontario

I would have thought that the Arkansans would be too busy organizing Super Tuesday to bother sending weather up here!

One group of Ottawa inhabitants that is apparently not going to experience a storm is the Foundation IP team. Last year 154 non-EPL Contribution Questionnaires (CQs) were submitted to IPzilla in the month of January. 122 of those were submitted on the 30th or 31st! While past performance does not necessarily represent the future gains, the team has been stocking up on water, Tums and crates of patience. It may be all for naught. As of a few minutes ago only 75 CQs had been submitted for the entire month and the queue has only 58 pending.

This is great if its for real. Its bad if there is a storm brewing just out of radar/satellite range. The day is not over until midnight but it seems unlikely that committers around the world are poised to submit an onslaught of CQs. More likely is that committers and project leaders have forgotten about the deadline. Also possible is that we have simply identified and cleared all the interesting third-party code out there.  Uhhh, no.

Seriously folks, if you have not submitted CQs for the things that you think you will need for Ganymede, please do so now. The IP team really needs to know what they are dealing with over the next few months so they can schedule and prioritize accordingly.

I tried to come up with some jokes and humorous stuff to put in this post but nothing seemed to work. So here it is, straight out…

After a lot of thought I have decided to leave IBM. I’m leaving the team after more than two decades of enjoyable, challenging and exciting work first at OTI then, after the acquisition, at IBM. As you can imagine this was not an easy decision. Many of the people in the world I continue to call OTI are friends from university and we literally grew up together. From covert beginnings in a townhouse (the only one on the block with 10Base5 networking) just across from where I live now to chocolate mousse at Montebello to acquisition and assimilation by Big Blue. We have been though a lot together. I will certainly miss them.

But wait, I am not leaving entirely; I am not leaving Eclipse. As one of the people who developed the first prototype before it was Eclipse, I am deeply committed to the technology and the community. So much so that I am putting my money where my mouth is and starting a company around enabling success with Eclipse, Equinox and Eclipse in the runtime space. To that end, my plan is to stay involved in Eclipse both as a committer and my current project leadership roles.

One of my goals is to drive still more participation in Eclipse whether it is me personally, my company or vicariously through others. As with the evolution of Eclipse in the RCP space, we are now entering the runtime space and Equinox is particularly well-positioned to make a real impact.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, yes, I am planning to run for re-election to the Eclipse Board of Directors. My work there over the past two years has been extremely rewarding. I learn something with every board interaction and believe I am having a real impact on the board and the quality of life at Eclipse.

So, exciting times ahead. Look for me at EclipseCon or out on the boat with my kids.

Recently I was reviewing the Equinox project, the direction and the community around it.  One of the things that stood out for me is that Tom Watson has been quietly leading vast swaths of the activity in Equinox from the framework and service implementations to the OSGi spec work and areas in between.  Not only does Tom produce great code and designs but he has a great sense of the community and repeatedly performs heroic feats to meet their needs.

It is with great pleasure then that the Eclipse PMC invited Tom to co-lead the Equinox project and he accepted.  Congratulations Tom and thanks for all the great work!