A Year of DTP

So, there I was, flipping bits at a local software company when the chance to propose the Eclipse Data Tools Platform (DTP) project appeared. We went live with the proposal on eclipse.org a year ago today... Yes, a year ago...

And a lot has happened during that year. I went to EclipseCon and met a lot of great people. The interest in DTP was amazing, and the result was a core group that would eventually form the DTP committer team. DTP progressed from proposal to top-level project at eclipse.org. We went to EclipseWorld. We wrote a number of articles and did various presentations. And we have even built some software along the line.

Now, I had worked on a variety of software projects, in a variety of roles. I've seen the typical range of outcomes, and I've had my share of blurried-eye, three AM coding marathons too. I've worked with small teams and large, and quite a bit in virtual teams as well.

But nothing quite prepares you for open source development, especially in a rich ecosystem like eclipse.org. Most people assume that being the chair of such a project is like being a engineering manager. Or maybe a project manager. But the truth is that (as someone, who I can't remember, told me early on) that running a top-level project at eclipse.con is more like running a start-up company. You get to do it all: you are HR, project management, product management, build management, businesse development... Yeah, the whole lot of it...

And it has been fascinating. As we close in on this year's EclipseCon, we expect to have a solid release for the community. We'll have a tutorial and two long talks at EclipseCon. We'll have a lot of informal meetings. DTP will be there in force.

Finally, we'll be talking to the community to learn about what DTP has done well in the past year, what we have done poorly and, most importantly, how we can grow and improve in the coming year. I look forward to it...