1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,800 Hi everybody, here we are at EclipseCon 2009 in lovely Santa Clara. 2 00:00:05,800 --> 00:00:07,920 We've got a guest with ourselves, would you like to introduce yourself? 3 00:00:08,240 --> 00:00:13,540 Hey, I'm Jeff McCaffer, I'm the CTO of EclipseSource, and I lead the Eclipse, several projects 4 00:00:13,540 --> 00:00:17,440 at Eclipse, in fact, like the runtime project, the PMC, and the Equinox project I co-lead 5 00:00:17,440 --> 00:00:17,940 with Tom Watson. 6 00:00:17,940 --> 00:00:21,320 I've actually spoken with you at least once, if not a couple times before. 7 00:00:21,440 --> 00:00:23,100 We've been covering the Equinox quite a bit. 8 00:00:23,200 --> 00:00:23,960 It's good fun, yep. 9 00:00:24,080 --> 00:00:29,380 And what I was hoping to talk with you about is essentially just to get an update on what's 10 00:00:29,380 --> 00:00:34,040 happening with Equinox, for as many times as we've spoken on this topic, and for as much 11 00:00:34,040 --> 00:00:40,520 as Equinox is really, I guess you could say, at the bottom, or at the center, otherwise, 12 00:00:40,720 --> 00:00:41,080 of things. 13 00:00:41,080 --> 00:00:41,500 We'd like to be there, yeah. 14 00:00:41,700 --> 00:00:44,380 Yeah, I mean, I'm just curious how things have been going in the past year. 15 00:00:44,400 --> 00:00:47,420 There's lots of different things happening, you know, in the runtime project as a whole 16 00:00:47,420 --> 00:00:52,180 at Eclipse, lots of things are happening, but in Equinox, we've got the new version of the 17 00:00:52,180 --> 00:00:56,760 OSCI spec is coming up, and so there's lots of new innovations there, and things in the 18 00:00:56,760 --> 00:01:01,240 enterprise expert group, distributed services specifications coming out, and we've got 19 00:01:01,240 --> 00:01:05,120 implementations of that RFC 119 specification. 20 00:01:05,620 --> 00:01:09,220 It's actually going into the Eclipse communication framework project, so it's not just Equinox, 21 00:01:09,300 --> 00:01:11,580 it's a whole runtime kind of constellation of stuff going on. 22 00:01:11,580 --> 00:01:14,680 We're touching on one thing that was interesting, and that's sort of the enterprise spec for 23 00:01:14,680 --> 00:01:22,000 OSGI, and how, I guess Equinox is sort of an implementation of that to some respect. 24 00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:22,320 Parts of it, yeah. 25 00:01:22,960 --> 00:01:27,280 The OSGI specs are, there's many of them, and you can sort of choose which ones you want 26 00:01:27,280 --> 00:01:32,480 to implement, and so we've implemented a vast majority of the core specification, and now 27 00:01:32,480 --> 00:01:36,240 there's enterprise and there's mobile expert group specification as well. 28 00:01:36,560 --> 00:01:42,320 We've got some pieces from there, and so we're doing all the cool things, we think, all the 29 00:01:42,320 --> 00:01:43,180 cool and useful stuff. 30 00:01:43,240 --> 00:01:44,640 Only the stuff people would want, right? 31 00:01:44,740 --> 00:01:47,940 Yeah, I mean, the distributed services in particular is quite interesting. 32 00:01:48,240 --> 00:01:48,600 Right. 33 00:01:49,140 --> 00:01:54,900 But in the whole Equinox sphere of things, and that with P2 as well, our provisioning technology, 34 00:01:55,440 --> 00:01:59,580 P2 is really taking off, and lots of people adopting it in different ways. 35 00:01:59,700 --> 00:02:05,960 We're doing some cool things with Eclipse distributions, and the EPP wizard is our new download technology 36 00:02:05,960 --> 00:02:10,240 that will be available with Galileo, and that's all based on the P2 technology. 37 00:02:10,240 --> 00:02:11,560 Can you tell us a little bit more about P2? 38 00:02:11,560 --> 00:02:11,980 Oh, yeah, sure, sure. 39 00:02:11,980 --> 00:02:14,920 Because that's one of those things that people are always rabid to know about. 40 00:02:15,060 --> 00:02:18,300 It's the constant quest to have the better update manager. 41 00:02:18,300 --> 00:02:19,720 And more, of course. 42 00:02:20,080 --> 00:02:20,280 Yeah, yeah. 43 00:02:20,540 --> 00:02:25,720 So the update manager we had previously was very much tailored to delivering IDEs that 44 00:02:25,720 --> 00:02:29,120 were relatively static, and it wasn't really particularly OSGI aware and that sort of thing. 45 00:02:29,560 --> 00:02:34,040 And so about a year and a half ago, two years ago, we recognized the deficiency and started 46 00:02:34,040 --> 00:02:35,000 on this P2 effort. 47 00:02:35,560 --> 00:02:41,660 And Ganymede, which was last year's release, had P2 in it, and now we're refining it, going 48 00:02:41,660 --> 00:02:46,700 further, and providing a bunch of tooling around it, and going to actually start delivering 49 00:02:46,700 --> 00:02:53,260 Galileo, our next release with P2, using the EPP wizard, which is basically a wrap-based, 50 00:02:53,260 --> 00:02:58,000 an Ajax-based wizard that you go and choose the things you want from the download site. 51 00:02:58,360 --> 00:03:02,540 Oh, yes, I'm a C guy, but I want some modeling things and some Mylan and that sort of stuff. 52 00:03:02,620 --> 00:03:02,740 Right. 53 00:03:02,860 --> 00:03:07,840 And then push a button at the end and get a download, get a little installer that comes 54 00:03:07,840 --> 00:03:10,040 and sucks all the bytes down for you and that sort of thing. 55 00:03:10,160 --> 00:03:10,460 Right. 56 00:03:10,460 --> 00:03:17,520 So it's essentially having a sort of custom-built packaging from a user's perspective. 57 00:03:17,520 --> 00:03:21,960 You know, and I keep going back to the stackless stack thing that you, you know, came up with 58 00:03:21,960 --> 00:03:23,640 whenever that was, a year or two ago. 59 00:03:24,080 --> 00:03:26,680 And it really is actually, it captures it very well. 60 00:03:26,760 --> 00:03:31,600 I mean, there's so many stacks, so many, there may not be any, so it's a stackless world. 61 00:03:31,680 --> 00:03:34,820 And you just go and pick from the menu what it is you want. 62 00:03:34,820 --> 00:03:38,720 We were talking this morning about how to deliver runtime technology at Eclipse. 63 00:03:38,720 --> 00:03:44,500 We got all this great stuff, you know, from EclipseLink and JPA2 implementations and to 64 00:03:44,500 --> 00:03:45,860 BERT, right, reporting stuff. 65 00:03:45,900 --> 00:03:47,340 It's not all under the RT project. 66 00:03:47,940 --> 00:03:51,360 And so we were talking about, like, what downloads, what packages can we deliver to people? 67 00:03:51,440 --> 00:03:52,680 And so, well, put it all in there. 68 00:03:52,760 --> 00:03:54,640 Well, that, you know, not everybody needs all of that stuff. 69 00:03:54,680 --> 00:03:55,460 Well, put none of it in there. 70 00:03:55,480 --> 00:03:56,600 Well, then it's not interesting, right? 71 00:03:56,700 --> 00:04:01,620 So the answer, I think, is to provide people with this wizard where basically they can go and 72 00:04:01,620 --> 00:04:02,880 say, well, yes, I'm doing servlets. 73 00:04:03,000 --> 00:04:03,980 Yes, I want some modeling. 74 00:04:04,200 --> 00:04:06,180 Yes, I want some, you know, communication stuff. 75 00:04:06,360 --> 00:04:07,360 And I want some BERT. 76 00:04:07,780 --> 00:04:07,960 Right. 77 00:04:08,040 --> 00:04:08,560 Check, check, check. 78 00:04:08,720 --> 00:04:09,460 Push the button. 79 00:04:10,060 --> 00:04:11,060 Now you've got your stack. 80 00:04:11,420 --> 00:04:12,600 And it's your stack, not my stack. 81 00:04:12,660 --> 00:04:14,600 My stack has something else in it, right? 82 00:04:14,620 --> 00:04:17,320 So I think that's where we're going with the whole P2 story. 83 00:04:17,720 --> 00:04:21,380 And, of course, people can use it to deliver their own, you know, integrate it with their 84 00:04:21,380 --> 00:04:23,120 applications and deliver their own stuff. 85 00:04:23,340 --> 00:04:29,480 We just sort of talked, we talked about P2 and using Equinox as being built on top of 86 00:04:29,480 --> 00:04:32,000 that to sort of build the custom packaging and configuration. 87 00:04:32,720 --> 00:04:36,260 But, of course, I mean, Equinox is, of course, like a back-end technology. 88 00:04:36,260 --> 00:04:41,640 Obviously, in the server world, the web app servers, they are, all the major vendors have 89 00:04:41,640 --> 00:04:45,060 adopted OSGI, and most of those are using Equinox. 90 00:04:45,060 --> 00:04:50,460 So we're seeing, of course, WebSphere has long since been using Equinox under the covers, 91 00:04:50,940 --> 00:04:55,260 and the Spring DM guys, and I'm trying to think of them all now, the Paramus guys. 92 00:04:55,500 --> 00:04:55,520 Right. 93 00:04:56,200 --> 00:05:00,200 And everybody's basically, I saw the Glassfish team demoing. 94 00:05:00,200 --> 00:05:01,280 Right, that's right, that's right. 95 00:05:01,320 --> 00:05:05,000 They were at a boff, and they were demoing Glassfish's OSGI base, and it runs on Felix, 96 00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:07,620 the Apache implementation, and it runs on Equinox. 97 00:05:07,760 --> 00:05:09,220 And so, like, they were demoing that yesterday. 98 00:05:09,640 --> 00:05:12,060 And so it's really in a server world. 99 00:05:12,560 --> 00:05:16,660 I think OSGI and Equinox are really coming to the fore now. 100 00:05:16,860 --> 00:05:19,660 All the different major vendors are adopting it. 101 00:05:19,780 --> 00:05:23,140 SAP has announced they're moving NetWeaver onto Equinox. 102 00:05:23,800 --> 00:05:25,860 So, you know, this is a really big deal. 103 00:05:25,860 --> 00:05:29,680 One of the things that we've discussed in the past is, you know, if you're moving to using 104 00:05:29,680 --> 00:05:35,240 Equinox or OSGI or whatever, there's a somewhat different programming model that you have to 105 00:05:35,240 --> 00:05:35,520 follow. 106 00:05:35,680 --> 00:05:38,140 And how have you seen that programming model play out? 107 00:05:38,140 --> 00:05:42,020 It's a double-edged sword a little bit, because one of the values we try to put forward 108 00:05:42,020 --> 00:05:46,120 of this is you get one programming model for all the different platforms. 109 00:05:46,120 --> 00:05:50,740 So I did a talk yesterday where I demoed stuff that was running embedded, stuff that was running 110 00:05:50,740 --> 00:05:55,140 a rich client platform, things that were running wholly server-side headless, and stuff that 111 00:05:55,140 --> 00:05:57,760 was running server-side with an AJAX UI. 112 00:05:58,560 --> 00:06:02,480 And that was all programmed with bundles, all programmed with extensions and services, like 113 00:06:02,480 --> 00:06:05,540 standard OSGI, Equinox, Eclipse kinds of technologies. 114 00:06:06,160 --> 00:06:11,300 And the same tool chain, the same developer skills, the same mindset and programming model, 115 00:06:11,640 --> 00:06:16,700 the same bundles, the same code pieces were being deployed, used in all of those different 116 00:06:16,700 --> 00:06:17,660 runtime scenarios. 117 00:06:18,240 --> 00:06:22,700 And I think that's where the real value comes in, is you don't have to have a bunch of PHP 118 00:06:22,700 --> 00:06:27,860 guys to do your web UI and a bunch of embedded guys to do your, you know, the mid-lit guys, 119 00:06:27,920 --> 00:06:29,840 you know, doing your embedded part and all that sort of thing. 120 00:06:29,840 --> 00:06:32,300 The programming model itself, so that's the value part, right? 121 00:06:32,300 --> 00:06:38,500 The downside, I guess, is that it is a non, I don't want to say non-standard, but it's 122 00:06:38,500 --> 00:06:41,400 a lot of people know how to program Java, moving and doing bundles. 123 00:06:42,020 --> 00:06:43,500 Well, it's a new way to package up. 124 00:06:43,500 --> 00:06:50,180 It's a new way to package stuff, and the power of Equinox and OSGI doesn't come for free. 125 00:06:50,680 --> 00:06:53,700 There's a bit of stuff you have to do, there's some markup, and, you know, if you're going 126 00:06:53,700 --> 00:06:57,300 to have somebody manage your dependencies, you have to say what your dependencies are, right? 127 00:06:57,300 --> 00:06:58,640 There's no free lunch, right? 128 00:06:58,700 --> 00:07:04,300 So you actually have to express that stuff, and we've got really good tooling that's been 129 00:07:04,300 --> 00:07:08,640 developed over many years in the plug-in development environment, and that's been refined. 130 00:07:08,880 --> 00:07:12,940 We've got new tooling for declarative services, so declarative services allow you to put all 131 00:07:12,940 --> 00:07:18,940 this stuff together declaratively and use OSGI services like that, so the new tooling there 132 00:07:18,940 --> 00:07:20,440 is really very helpful. 133 00:07:20,440 --> 00:07:24,300 Last time we talked to you with IBM, and now, as your shirt says, you're with EclipseSource, 134 00:07:24,300 --> 00:07:29,380 and so what's been the story of, because it was actually, it was cloud nine, if I remember. 135 00:07:29,380 --> 00:07:29,700 Code nine. 136 00:07:29,700 --> 00:07:30,340 Code nine, that's right. 137 00:07:30,340 --> 00:07:33,280 We thought of cloud nine, too, but it was code nine, yeah. 138 00:07:33,380 --> 00:07:37,840 But, so there was another, you had your own sort of little company in between there merge 139 00:07:37,840 --> 00:07:38,080 together. 140 00:07:38,120 --> 00:07:42,620 About a year and a bit ago, I left IBM and started code nine, and that was all focused around 141 00:07:42,620 --> 00:07:46,840 runtime technologies and that sort of thing, and we grew to about five people or so over 142 00:07:46,840 --> 00:07:48,600 the year, and... 143 00:07:48,600 --> 00:07:50,100 Yeah, you have a little Austin office, if I remember. 144 00:07:50,100 --> 00:07:55,540 Well, we do, yeah, we got, now, so what happened in about November last year, Interpract, the 145 00:07:55,540 --> 00:08:01,360 company behind RAP and G-Eclipse and EPP and the packaging stuff at Eclipse, it's a German 146 00:08:01,360 --> 00:08:06,220 company, we merged, so Code nine and Interpract have merged, and now we've formed a new company 147 00:08:06,220 --> 00:08:11,260 called EclipseSource, lots of stuff in the runtime technology area, we're heavily involved 148 00:08:11,260 --> 00:08:16,240 in Eclipse itself, of course, lots of people on the board and PMCs and, you know, leading 149 00:08:16,240 --> 00:08:17,800 like 10 projects and that sort of stuff. 150 00:08:17,800 --> 00:08:19,740 Thanks for taking all this time to talk with us today. 151 00:08:19,740 --> 00:08:20,240 Sure, thank you.