At Eclipse we ship, we don't slip

Software development is a discipline famous for missing deadlines.  Not at eclipse.org.

We ship.

Image © One Hill Tree Studios, http://www.flickr.com/photos/onetreehillstudios/3743874473/  licensed under Creative Commons by-nc-sa 2.0

We don't slip.

Image © Carina Ice http://www.flickr.com/photos/carinaice/4689720312/  licensed under Creative Commons by-nc-sa 2.0 

Congratulations to all the Helios participants whose worked so very hard over the past year to make this release a success.  For the Eclipse Project, this represents nine years of shipping at the end of June. Helios also represents the fifth coordinated release for the Eclipse foundation.  This is an amazing accomplishment!  I hope that you can all enjoy some time to relax over the summer months.

Image © Royce Bair http://www.flickr.com/photos/ironrodart/4290027967/  licensed under Creative Commons by-nc-sa 2.0 

For those of you who don't need a break, our builds toward 3.6.1 start tomorrow morning :-)

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How to explain open source to your family

I've had the following conversation several times in my life. While meeting a new person at a party, or catching up with a relative that I haven't seen in a while.

Q. So Kim, what do you do for a living?
A. I work at IBM where I spent most of my time working on a open source project called Eclipse.

Q. Open source? Isn't that where they give away software for free? How do you make money off of that?
A. Well, IBM makes products based on this open source software. It's an advantage to have people involved in the open source community and working on improving the software they consume for their products.

Q. So you get paid to give away your work for free?
A. Yes.

Q. What does this open source software do?
A. Well, it's used by other people to write more software.

Awkward pause.

At this point, I often wish that I had lied and told them that I'm a vet. Because everyone loves puppies.

Image by gareso14

Anyways, I saw the most excellent link cross my twitter feed last night from the Open Source Business Resource that explains why we work in open source in a very funny and accessible way.

video: Paul Ramsey explains to his mother in-law why career in #opensource is not as insane as it appears #osgeo http://ht.ly/1ZZFL



The video "Beyond Nerds Bearing Gifts: The Future of the Open Source Economy" has bunnies, evil geniuses and swordplay. It compares open source software with evolutionary biology to illustrate the advantages of a corporation investing in open source. I highly recommend taking the time to watch it. (There's 30 second commercial at the beginning).

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Ottawa Helios Celebration

In celebration of the Helios release, some eclipse committerati and Eclipse foundation staff will be meeting for lunch next Wednesday eclipse family from the Ottawa area are invited to meet for lunch next Wednesday*. Here are the details:

Marshy's Bar and Grill, 117 Centrepointe Drive, noon, Wednesday June 23

Image by claudmey

Food, beer and eclipse family, what could be better? Helios is a tremendous accomplishment, let's celebrate! The software is free, but there isn't free lunch so please bring your wallet :-) Let me know if you plan to attend in the comments, so we can adjust the number of people in the restaurant reservation. See you there!

*I changed the introduction to be more inclusive. Denis told me that it sounded like I was excluding people. That certainly wasn't my intention but I'm a release engineer, not a wordsmith. I always listen to what Denis says :-)

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