There seems to be a consensus among open-source technology watchers that the Eclipse platform has reached a tipping point in its evolution toward widespread industry acceptance and even popularity. The recent EclipseCon trade show offered plenty of evidence to support the idea--primarily in the form of brand-name companies either jumping on board for the first time or ratcheting up their involvement in the Eclipse Foundation.
IBM again showed that it is nothing if not savvy when it comes to Linux with its recent Linuxworld announcement of Chiphopper. The program, also called the IBM eServer Application Server Advantage for Linux, is a package of support and testing tools to help ISVs port x86 Linux applications to IBM architecture.
IBM has announced that it is investing $100 million over the next three years to expand Linux support and technology across its Workplace software portfolio. The announcement comes as a result of high double-digit growth in 2004 in the number of customers deploying IBM collaboration software on Linux, according to company officials.
Borland Software confirmed rumors this week that it would be upgrading its membership in the Eclipse Foundation. The Scotts Valley, CA-based toolmaker, which was one of the founding member companies of the organization, has signed on as a strategic developer and member of the board.
The number of companies jumping on the Eclipse bandwagon has been growing at a furious pace since it gained official independence from IBM last year. Twenty-six companies joined the Eclipse Foundation in 2004, bumping that organization's roster to 82 members, including strategic developers, add-in providers, and associate members.
Apply these usage and technical tips to a world-class IDE brimming with features.
One of the more intriguing pieces of news to come out of this week's EclipseCon 2005 conference is the Eclipse Foundation's announcement that it has completed its first-ever roadmap. The roadmap document, which the foundation plans to revise annually, is intended to provide visibility to the open-source community around Eclipse and the Eclipse ecosystem, explains Eclipse Foundation Executive Director Mike Milinkovich.
"There is a lot of money walking around the show floor," noted open-source evangelist Bruce Perens, describing how Linux has turned into a commercial marketplace. Citing surveys showing that 53 percent of CIOs expect open source to dominate their IT environments by 2007, Novell chairman and CEO Jack Messman claimed that Linux is ready for the enterprise today.
Why do so many projects fail to go that last mile by providing the documentation
that would make them actually useable?
With Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System supposed to ship sometime late this year, IBM is ramping up its counteroffensive by stressing its open-source commitment.
You know open source has really arrived when they start bringing in the lawyers. The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) announced last week the formation of an organization that will provide free legal services for developers of free and open-source software (FOSS). The Software Freedom Law Center was established to offer advice on licensing, to show developers how to avoid intellectual property (IP) claims, and to defend against litigation when such claims arise.
A panel of Linux luminaries took the stage at last week's Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) Linux Summit and held forth on a range of topics, from the threat of software patents to the challenges of making a career in open source.
Sun Microsystems is set to unveil its strategy for open sourcing its Solaris operating system Tuesday, Jan. 24, beginning immediately with the DTrace utility. The source code for DTrace, Sun's new dynamic tracing framework, will be available for download Tuesday at opensolaris.org. The company is promising to provide "buildable code" from the upcoming Solaris 10 release by the second quarter.
IBM seen challenging software industry with release of patents to open source community.
It's easy to think of Microsoft and open source as implacable enemies. But in
fact, many people are building open source code with Microsoft tools, and others
use open source tools to build proprietary software. In this book, Brian Nantz
surveys some of the intersections and provides plenty of pointers to good tools
and sample code.