Tuesday, September 15, 2009

On Going Forth to the Past...

And so it would seem that, while there are things, both personal and professional, that we must let go of in life, there are some we may choose not to. Open source is one such thing for me, and open specifications are another. To that end, I'm happy to say that I was recently appointed representative of the Eclipse Foundation at the Object Management Group. This means that, while I won't be resuming all of my former responsibilities at the OMG, I am once again able to actively participate in shaping the joint future of these two organizations.

I'm currently working on organizing a follow-up to the symposia that were held back in 2008 (I'll post more information on that as it becomes available). Of course, before hosting such an event, I want to ensure that steps have been taken to address at least some of the important issues that were identified at the first symposia. At this point, I think the intellectual property relationship between Eclipse projects and OMG specifications is more clear than it was before. To further preserve this lineage, Eclipse is participating in the OMG's IPR policy review process on an ongoing basis.

As for a better means of tracking issues at the OMG, work has begun to migrate the large database of OMG issues, along with their associated triage processes, to Bugzilla. With any luck, it should soon be possible to submit and track an issue against an OMG specification as a Bugzilla record and, ideally (longer term), be able to do so from within a tool that is based on that specification (e.g., by using Mylyn tasks with contexts based on models). If you're interested in seeing this happen, or perhaps even in helping bring it to fruition, I'd love to hear about it!

Monday, September 14, 2009

On Letting Go...

Woah, it's been quite a while since my last entry. While my new life as jetsam has taught me a whole new meaning to the expression "the truth will set you free", I've been focusing more on figuring out what to do with my freedom rather than dwelling on how I earned it. I've been exploring a number of alternatives over the past couple of months, some of which I'll be blogging about in the near future.

One thing I know I'll be doing for sure is continuing my commitment to open (but not free!) source and, of course, Eclipse. In that vein, I'm thrilled that my long talk proposal for Eclipse Summit Europe, entitled "Papyrus: Advent of an Open Source IME at Eclipse", which I co-submitted with Raphael Faudou, Patrick Tessier, and Cedric Dumoulin, has been accepted. I finally completed my registration this morning (after overcoming some browser obstacles) and am looking forward to being in Ludwigsburg again this October. I'm particularly stoked about who one of the keynote speakers is this year. I had the distinct privilege of spending time with Tony Bailetti this summer as part of the Lead to Win program (more on that later), so I know first-hand that we're in for a treat. This year's summit is shaping up to be a dandy; I hope to see you there!