Thursday, August 28, 2008

itemis: Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Today I signed a long term retainer contract with itemis, a Strategic Developer Member of the Eclipse Foundation that specializes in bringing the benefits of model-based software development to its rapidly growing client base. They're a company driven by technical innovation with an eye to the future. They have a talented and dynamic group of people who are doing amazingly cool things; the kinds of things I wanted to do but couldn't. You've probably already noticed the blogs from folks like Peter, Sven, and Jan so I don't need to detail all the interesting things these guys are doing in the modeling space. Human readable notations are of particular interest to me. I feel just like a moth buzzing among the flowers.


So what will I be doing for itemis? The contract is very simple; I didn't need a lawyer to explain what I was committing to by signing it. You have to like that as a good start hey? I'll be spending most of each week working on whatever I feel is important in terms of continuing to build the momentum behind EMF and the Modeling project. In other words, itemis is primarily funding the work that I do for the community. Of course it's in their best business interests as well---they're not a charitable organization---but in terms of being a good member of the Eclipse community, they are very clearly putting their money where their mouth is. It's a case of self interest, becoming mutual interest, and ultimately common interest. I'm sure some interesting developments will take shape.


I expect to get many more opportunities to travel to conferences and hence to spend a great deal more time with the growing community. For me, that's worth a lot! But don't tell itemis; it's an onerous task. I'm excited again about my own personal future but even more so about the future of modeling. In the end, and I do mean in the very end, a guy would like to think something good has been accomplished in our time here. With enough good people working together just about anything is possible.

7 comments:

Darin Swanson said...

Congratulations Ed!

Wassim Melhem said...

Peter Friese still needs to submit a picture "with a leafy background" to the PDE/UI contributors page.

Please see what you can do. I hear you have a camera.

Lucas said...

That's what I call a cool job !

I'm a long time partisan for such "open source full time positions" paradigm.

With your new role, I'm sure everything will remain "vendor neutral", coherent & innovative.

All the best.

KetanPadegaonkar said...

Congrats, Ed!

Anonymous said...

Congratulations.

I hope this also means you will have more time to finish your great book on EMF :-)

/Tonny

Anonymous said...

Great Stuff. Glad to hear that you will 1) be able to feed the family and 2) be able to feed the community with great contributions!

Bill T.

Anonymous said...

Great to hear it, Ed!! Was checking out the news on oAW site and came across the announcement. I know I've mentioned oAW enough on the EMF forums.. It is such a perfect fit -- the two most exciting technologies out there and you and Itemis have both shown an enormous commitment to supporting and building the open source community.