EclipseCon: Monday Afternoon

After the board meeting was done, I spent time chatting with a few people, which of course is one of the great things about Eclipse. I also discovered that there are actually two Lynns! Sure she's a spiffy dresser (nice jacket Lynn!) and she seems all sweet and innocent, but she wears a green "trouble maker" ribbon for a reason:


She starts out all nice as she is here with Kevin McGuire.


But one wrong word from Kevin and it's Lynn's evil twin:


After that, no man is safe, not even poor Eike Stepper, who maneuvered quickly to protect himself from the uncalled-for assault.


Event poor Anthony Hunter wasn't safe.


She calmed down a bit and lulled David Williams into a false sense of security.


But then she let him have it too!


Then it was time for the Eclipse Jeopardy and the Community Awards. I sucked at Jeopardy and I think Bjorn unfairly favored Jeff to win. He said cheating was okay, but I didn't think that meant Bjorn was allowed to cheat.

I felt honored to win the Top Ambassador award! Chris was Top Committer. Remy Suen was the Top Contributor. And Eric Rizzo was the Most Prolific Newcomer Evangelist. I'll have to work on my diplomacy skills now!

I spotted James and Christian at the reception.


I didn't know Ralph and Pat were good friends!


I practiced by diplomatic skills on Markus, Rich, Achim and Bernd with great results:


I felt bad I missed the Modeling in the Enterprise BoF. Time flies when you have free foot and drinks. Quite a few people turned out for the Where are my Models BoF.


It took two pictures to capture them all.


Ed Willink and Rich described some of their current implementation details and we discussed general requirements. I'll need to go off and investigate a prototype implementation for something we can all share.

Tomorrow should be another exciting day. I look forward to it. Stay tuned.

EclipseCon: The Board Meeting

Breakfast for the board meeting started at 7:30, so no sleeping in today. I'm honored to have been reelected and I'll work hard to live up to expectations. Voter turn out for the election was still shockingly low so we have a long way to go to improve this situation...

The meeting started with Bjorn presenting some of the conference finance and attendee statistics. EclipseCon 2008 is definitely doing well.


There are so many board members, it's hard to fit them all around the table, which also makes taking their picture more difficult. But then, committers always love a challenge!


Note the sash I'm wearing? As part of enhancing board member visibility Bjorn has come up with this very visible sash that we can wear at the reception tomorrow. He asked me to come up and model it. I felt just like Miss America. I was so moved, I nearly started babbling; I felt the need to say "such as" repeatedly. Maybe it's something in the water...

Of course my sash modeling went over quite well. Whom better to model something, after all?


See Darin in the background, taking a picture of me taking a picture? I feel sad he wasn't reelected.


You can see others fawning over their new satiny new sash!


I'm also sad that add-in provider representative Howard Lewis will not longer be on the board. As Jeff said, we will miss his experience and his sage advice.

It's too bad there are board confidentiality rules to hold me back. Otherwise, I could blog about all the discussions in detail. Oh well, the published abridged minutes will have to suffice.

EclipseCon: The Day Before

I had to get up early to fly to San Francisco today. The girls needed a goodbye hug before I left.


Unlike Kenn's flight, our flight left on time and actually arrived early. There were many familiar faces on our flight, including Chris Recoskie Mike, Kimberley, Wassim, and of course Dave and Nick.

Wassim, Dave, Nick, and I went for a nice walk and had lunch at a Mexican restaurant.


After that I met with Francisco, Faisal, and Greg to discuss the kinds of things that make open source projects successful.


At the registration hall, Lynn twists arms and holds no punches in an effort to get Naci to commit to a webinar. Apparently she's got a list of people she's stalking, so I suggest if you spot her, you agree to whatever reasonable thing she requests before the scene turns ugly!


Lynn and I had a drink in the sunshine and then I went to my room to call home. Note that I could use the internet connection to phone for free, including a webcam feed. No need for expensive cell phones! I also answered a few newsgroups questions; those things never seem to take a day off!

Then it was off to Ian's blogger party, which just attracted more and more people until all the tables were used up. Free beer tends to do that!


As we headed up to Mike's board reception, I ran into Ed Willink whose picture is not yet on the modeling who's who page. As I threatened those who did not provide pictures: I will find you and photograph you!


Two steps further and there's Tatiana, Rich, and John!


The board reception was very sociable with yummy stacks and more free drinks. Here are Janet and Ralph.


A last check at the lobby bar turns up Dave Carlson and Kenn chatting.


It's been a long day!

Eclipse is Like Family

After all the dust settled from last week's touchy issues, and after reading David's blog, it struck me that Eclipse has gotten to be just like family to me. Family are the people who mean the most to me and as such are also the people who are most easily able to get under my skin. Have you ever noticed that your family often behaves as if they have a divine right to criticize anything and everything? Of course they do. They know what's best for you and often know you better than you know yourself.


Most telling of all is that while it's fine for me to criticize my family, it's not so fine for anyone else to criticize my family. When others do criticize, suddenly I get this feeling of hey, sure I might have been criticizing too, but this has gone too far. How dare you be so critical of these people who are so dear to me? What makes you think you're so perfect anyway? Have you ever heard of the principle "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"? I suggest you become perfect before you criticize anyone in my family!


I think Eclipse has gotten to be like family for many of us. I can't wait for next week's family reunion. Though I sure hope crazy Uncle Ingrate doesn't show his ugly face. It's going to be "Eclipse Awesomeness Week" since we're clearly far too awesome for a celebration of our collective awesomeness to be contained in just one day!

Perception is Reality

Yesterday made me sad for a number of different reasons, all of them are related to a common underlying theme that Bjorn called out just the other day in his interesting blog about Perception verses Reality. The underlying issue is that our perceptions of the world is what drives our mental model of reality. It's all fine that someone might point out to us that our perceptions are deceiving us and that reality doesn't actually conform to the mental model we've constructed, but it's very hard to change the way perceptions give rise to our mental model.

The first sad thing for me was to lose my patience and my temper. Many people note that I tend to be quite soft spoken---goodness knows I often need to repeat myself to be heard---so when I raise my voice in frustration, it's easily noticed. To protect the innocent, I'll leave out the names and the details. Suffice to say, I was on yet another mission to do good and to be helpful so I had a very hard time trying to cope with the fact that my attempt to arrive at a long term solution for a long standing problem was not perceived in a way that matched the intent. It wasn't even the case that the results of my actions didn't yield the solution I had intended. In fact, I believe the problem was solved in the best of all possible ways. So the fact that this optimal outcome did not result a positive reaction from the folks who have been coping with the problem for years just threw me for a loop. The feeling of "no good deed goes unpunished" overwhelmed me, and being human and all, I didn't react as well as I might have. After calming down, I realized that the perception was that the optimal solution might take a bit longer than a suboptimal one. I still could have cried.


The e4 debacle from yesterday deeply saddened me even more. Of course, like Mike, I think controversy can be both interesting and healthy, but my sense is that the e4 discussions really need a boost to get past the divisiveness of hurt feelings and the misunderstandings. I like to see our community thrive and I think the way e4 was handled was unfortunate and leaves behind a taint that needs to be healed. This was particularly upsetting to me for a number of reason, so let me elaborate on some of them.

I think it's important to point out that the Eclipse 4.0 plans were presented to the board at our face-to-face meeting in December. So all the board members were informed and there was a call to action. During that meeting, it became clear that previous efforts to recruit strategic developers committers for the platform had largely failed; that effort was initiated before I was on the board. It was interesting to realize that one reason for the failure was characterized as IBM showing up asking for people to work for them for free. My own efforts to recruit modelers seems to have been more successful and in light of the criticisms, it struck me that perhaps my efforts have been more successful because I've always focused directly on the grass roots, i.e., on interested people who have something specific they'd like to work on related to modeling. In other words, to put it very bluntly, I didn't show up at a board meeting with my beggar's hat out. Of course that's a gross mischaracterization for an organization like IBM which commits vast resources towards Eclipse, but, perception is reality and perception is a great filter.

Being the blunt outspoken type, during that meeting I pointed out that we needed to be very careful about perceptions with regard to Eclipse 4.0. Coming to the board with the premise "Here's a plan we think is a good one and we'd like you to step forward and help us" is not the same as coming to the board with the premise "Here are some cool things we think are important for the future of Eclipse and we'd like to work with you folks to gather additional ideas and then work as a group toward a common goal." See the subtle but fundamentally important difference that lies at the root of the problem?


My reasons for pointing all this background out are twofold. One is that the strategic developers were informed. And two, that folks were forewarned that managing the perceptions of how we work with the community on promoting this exciting new initiative is of fundamental import. I'm not sure the extent to which board members went back to discuss the Eclipse 4.0 proposals at their respective organizations but even if no communication took place, I think the way this proceeded from there represents yet another lapse. Sure Mike ought to have published the board meeting minutes by now---especially given the copious staffing at the EMO (just a little joke Mike)---but do we really expect the community at large to learn about this by avidly following the published board meeting minutes? No! Of course not. The developer community is entitled to expect that they will be approached directly.

Naturally the idea was that this would be presented to the community at EclipseCon where there's be ample opportunity to explain the big picture, everyone interested can attend, and spontaneous questions can be answered. Mcq dislikes travel with a passion so it is a really big deal for him personally that he is traveling for EclipseCon to present the e4 strawman proposal. In the interest of concreteness, he wanted to actually demonstrate something substantial by making available some real code rather than just spouting hot air about hypothetical vaporware. An incubator was needed to host that code and folks commiting to it needed commit rights. As a result, a very unfortunate announcement was posted to the community and hackles were raised. Many notes were posted and a number of blogs were written (one of which even disappeared in a blaze of Sith Lord sparks).

Again, to be really blunt, my reaction was to post some internal notes immediately. They were of the nature "What were you thinking when you wrote this?" The outcome was not only predictable but actually literally predicted. As Bjorn pointed out, it wasn't a case of people misreading the message, it was a case of miswriting the message. Well, it's too late. The damage is done and now it needs to be undone. Let's start by forgiving people their lack of attention to subtle but important details.


As part of repairing the damage, let me be 100% clear that the message was indeed miswritten and that people's negative reactions are largely justified. You might be surprised to know that I was personally upset to not be included in the long list of names. I believe modeling as the basis for data integration is fundamentally important to the evolution and success of Eclipse so I don't want it to be left out. Of course one more IBMer on the list of committers would only make the problem worse, but quite frankly that kind of makes me mad. I don't think it's right that we all be painted blue and then dismissed as if we as individuals don't represent diversity. It's just plain wrong and I won't put up with it. As an individual representing the modeling community I would indeed bring diversity to the picture. We need to get over this issue of coloring people. Sorry for ranting, but if you look closely, you'll see that even the blue coral has more than one color blue.


Well, I had a little chat with Boris later in the day, and he showed me the cool stuff they're doing with modeling in e4, so I was quickly placated. I expect to get involved for sure. I think I've developed a pathological attachment to all things Eclipse. But enough about me; back to the community. Actually, one more thing for the conspiricists who believe the world is controlled by an elite group that pulls all the strings behind the scenes; they might make devious suggestions that "d" is the 4th letter of the alphabet and that e4 is secret code for ed. Don't pay them any heed!

For those out in the community who, like me, feel disappointed that they've been left out. Worry not! The e4 project will not be a success without involvement from the community. Nice platitudes you might say? Let me put it a little differently then. The e4 project will be scrapped if there is insufficient participation from the community to staff the effort. And note that I didn't just say it will be scrapped if there is insufficient interest. I literally mean it will be scrapped if the community does not step forward as participants to carry a very significant fraction of the burden. Consider it a bright promise or an ugly threat as you see fit. Personally I see this as the best way to turn a new leaf at Eclipse. Let's get all get involved and let's focus on technical visions of utopia...

Patience is a Virtue

Sometimes people accuse me of being patient, to which I often reply "I believe you are mistaking persistence for patience." But I looked up Wikipedia's definition of patience which describes it as "the ability to endure waiting, delay, or provocation without becoming annoyed or upset, or to persevere calmly when faced with difficulties" so maybe folks were right. I must admit that I don't endure waiting or delay very well. I dive right in to make things happen quickly and I expect the same from others. Also, when it comes to dealing with provocation, I suppose I've gotten a lot better at overlooking that, but I'm still perhaps more inclined to slap the other's cheek as to turn my other cheek. I've learned from experience though that winning a battle is sometimes the best way to loose the war; oddly enough, most people don't like losing an argument and some people are vindictive. Some subjects are best left untouched.


When it comes to patience, it's really persevering in the face of difficulties that I do best, but not always calmly. Does that still count as patience? I'm getting a lot better at faking being calm, and I suppose the appearance of being calm is more important than actually being calm. I've learned that the pitch of my voice changes when I'm upset, i.e., I become shrill, so controlling my voice seems to be an effective way to control the underlying tension as well. It's pretty hard to get the ever-patient anemone excited, so I should learn to emulate that.


As an Eclipse board member, patience is an important virtue. That being said, just like diversity, patience also has dark side. When things need to get done, waiting patiently while nothing happens isn't going to generate positive feedback from the voters, nor should it. Patience ought not to be an excuse for lack of results. When I wanted to see solid statistics about strategic developer activity, i.e., whether each strategic developer really has eight full time active developers as required in their membership agreement, I didn't wait patiently for others to gather this data---thanks, by the way, to Doug and Scott for keeping this issue alive---I gathered the data myself. Well, actually, I delegated it to Nick. Nevertheless, it got done and now it's very easy for anyone to have a look at where we stand on this issue at any point in time; the data gathers itself. When Nick does something, he does it extremely well! This sea turtle waited patiently to be photographed, but unlike land turtles, sea turtles are capable of significant speed.


Darin had a great idea a while back to add pictures and a biography to the foundation's directors page. But we don't have control over that page so we must wait patiently for a great many months for it to happen. You'll recall I've blogged about this a few times already. I'm not feeling very patient anymore. I'm sure Nick would have done this in a few hours. Of course I fully understand that something like this is a minor detail and that there are likely a hundred things of higher priority, like Mike's excellent idea of a "meet the board members" booth at EclipseCon. I highly recommend you take the opportunity to chat with your board members; we're not as scary as we might look.


Climbing on my high horse for a moment, when it comes to addressing requests from people, I often find it's best to do the ones that take very little time first and the ones that take more time later. Everyone will notice when something that ought to take an hour takes weeks, but no one will notice when one more hour of delay is added to something that takes weeks. I believe this type of thinking, i.e., do small things first and big things later, is helping with the IP review turnaround. Clearly it helps improve perceptions as a general principle. I'll climb off of my seahorse now.


I waited patiently for a number of years for JDT to support external folders on the classpath; I just don't have the skills to solve such a problem myself. Well, patience has finally paid off! Kudos to the JDT team as a whole, and to Jerome in particular, for addressing 182537!! This will greatly simplify bootstrapping EMF from CVS. Chris is going to do the PDE part of the equation in time for M7. The quality of JDT and PDE is such an impressive thing. I have more confidence in JDT's compiler than I do in javac. If the two disagree on something, JDT typically turns out to have done it correctly as demonstrated in 219865 . And of course if there are problems in JDT, you know they will be fixed so fast your head spins. This angel fish is the most beautiful fish I photographed this year, so to me it represents the JDT team.


In closing, the lesson of the week from me is to be patient, but not too patient, especially when it comes to voting and registering for EclipseCon. For goodness sake, the clock is ticking!

Eclipse Board Election 2008

This year's Eclipse board election promises to be by far the most interesting to date. I feel that the incumbents can claim significant credit for that being the case. As a group, we have helped increase awareness of the role and the value of participating in it. I had a quick look through the candidate vision statements, and have a few opinions about them, as well as some opinions about the performance of the incumbents during the current term.


Firstly, I think all the incumbents did quite a good job of representing the committer's interests. For the most part, each of us has avoided toeing our organizational party line. Of course our primary fiduciary responsibility is to act in the best interests of the foundation. In addition, as employees of a company, we are also expected to act in the best interests of that company. Interestingly, there isn't actually a legal obligation to act in the committer's best interests, though clearly there is a strong social obligation to do so.

It's clearly possible for the various interests to conflict. One example of a potential conflict is the seemingly universal desire to see the parallel IP process expanded as much as possible. Kudos to Jeff and last year's other representatives for having gotten us this far in the first place! Certainly the committers don't want to be bogged down by legal obstacles, but that has to be balanced against the foundation's legal risks of an IP free for all. It's been a tough struggle to make progress on this issue. I've personally taken a very active role by getting involved on the board's IP committee and of course I get to see IBM's internal struggles with this issue as well.


Being bound by the strict confidentiality constraints both as an IBM employee and a board member makes it a challenge to discuss the machinations openly, which is quite frustrating for someone as gabby as me. Suffice to say, lawyers want to avoid risk---obviously doing nothing is the least risk of all---while developers want to make rapid technical progress and typically have little awareness or understanding of the legal risk. It's been painful but eye opening for me to be sure. It's certainly made me feel useful to be able to bring the developer's perspective to the table.

Many of the candidates specifically mention improvements to the IP process as something they want to pursue so I fully expect to see continuing progress. Probably many people will have noticed how much the process has already improved, with much faster turn around and a better sense of time to completion. Of course Janet's team and Mike's management direction deserve the lion's share of the credit, but we committer representatives too worked hard to make this happen.


One thing that struck me reading the candidate positions is that some will likely be frustrated to discover the many limitations of a board which is often powerless to effect change because there is so little resource for it to actually direct. The board also tends to avoid controversial issues and prefers to act only where there is consensus. It's also very important to realize that the board's role is not to treat Mike as a puppet we exploit to vicariously control the day-to-day operations of the Eclipse Management Organization. Mike will give new board members a nice little book that helps make it much more clear what a board should and shouldn't do. Mike needs to be empowered to manage his own organization while the board needs to focus high level direction that avoids getting bogged down by the minutia. A significant amount of what some of the candidates are outlining isn't really the role of the board at all. Of course I avoided all this by outlining very little in my vision statement other than clarifying the principles I use to guide my thinking. Anyone will tell you that I've been very outspoken.

I think that Jeff and Darin have by far the strongest and most well-considered platforms. Since Jeff has been on the board the longest---experience is definitely huge asset---I hope that he wins a seat. He's the diversity candidate of choice, being an independent now. And, to belabor the point of my previous blog, his one vote for himself will have more impact than will the votes of any group of committers from any member organization. So take note that he's taking the public position of one committer one vote. For a number of reasons, Jeff ranks at the top of my list.


Darin is the only candidate actually running for reelection; he's always running some or other horribly long marathon This guy has stamina! He is soft spoken and unassuming, but he's done an awful lot to improve the visibility of the committer representatives and has proven to be very constructive on the board. I have the greatest of respect for him and he's definitely an asset.

Chris is kind of the poster boy of Eclipse and has personally done more for Eclipse's sense of community than anyone else I can think of. He always brings a fresh youthful perspective to the picture and that's very useful on board composed to a large extend of senior executive types. Many of the good things I've done in the past year are a result of following his example. I think many will agree that he's an excellent example to follow.

Kosta has been active with issues like a common components project and a common build infrastructure project. They're very difficult issues to tackle without significant support from many involved parties.


The new candidates are especially exciting to see. Mik is an amazing guy! The two Dougs are both passionate people who blog actively and have each done a lot to help grow the community, to foster its diversity, and to promote Eclipse as a whole. No matter who wins, it's going to end up being a great set of people; the committer community should feel proud to have fielded such an excellent set of candidates. Of course I'd really like to win a seat myself. I've gotten such a kick out of being involved in something I had always considered completely outside of my usual little box. It's nice to have grown as a person. It has truly been a honor.