Meet This Year's Top Committer Nominees

Thomas Watson

DZone: Congratulations on the nomination Thomas. Could you tell us more about yourself?

Thomas: I live, work and play in Austin, Texas with my wife and 7 month old daughter.  I have been developing software for the past 11 years at IBM and have worked on a number of projects with-in IBM including network computers, service gateways, embedded devices and server technologies.  I have spent the better part of the past 7 years working on the OSGi specification and implementing various parts of the specification in the Equinox project at Eclipse.

DZone: What are the main things that you do within the community?

Thomas: I am the co-lead of the Equinox project and the lead developer of the Equinox OSGi framework.

DZone: How long have you been involved with Eclipse?

Thomas: In the Summer of 2003 I became a member of the Equinox technology project to assist the Core Platform team in moving the Eclipse 3.0 runtime over to the OSGi Framework.  Since then I have become the development lead of the Equinox OSGi Framework and the co-lead of the Equinox project.  The Equinox project has come a long ways since its initial days as a technology project at Eclipse. 

DZone: Do  you have a favourite project within the Eclipse ecosystem?

Thomas: Other than the Equinox project I would say e4.  I think they are really starting to do some interesting things in e4 and I hope to be able to contribute some time to the project in the future.

DZone: In the Eclipse world, what were your highlights of 2008, and what are you looking forward to in 2009?

Thomas: In 2008 there has been continued growth in the use and interest of OSGi technology and the modularity runtime it provides.  An Enterprise Expert Group was started at the OSGi Alliance to investigate using the modularity concepts of OSGi in the enterprise space.  I have enjoyed working on the new challenges and developing the next OSGi R4.2 specification as well as implementing the specification within the Equinox project.

In 2009 I look forward to participating in e4.  In particular I hope to be able to spend time working on modularity in other languages besides Java.  I also look forward the next major release of the OSGi specification.  I hope we can finally modernize the OSGi API.  Perhaps I can finally start using features of JavaSE 1.5.

DZone: What is your full time job?

Thomas: Sometimes it feels like I have two full time jobs.  My first job is my roles as an Eclipse committer which includes co-leading the Equinox project and development lead of the Equinox OSGi Framework.  My second job is participating in the expert groups within the OSGi Alliance developing the next versions of the OSGi specification.

DZone: What do you like most about contibuting to Eclipse?

Thomas: I enjoy the community of Eclipse and working on a core technology that get used by such a diverse set of projects at Eclipse as well as others outside of Eclipse.

DZone: Is it difficult for you to find the time to commit to Eclipse projects?

Thomas: I have the luxury of having a day job that requires I participate in Eclipse.  I easily consume more than enough hours in the day working on Eclipse.  The question is do I find it difficult to do anything else?

DZone: Why do you think you should be chosen as Top Committer?

Thomas: I am very active in both the Eclipse community and the OSGi community developing modularity features needed by the Eclipse platform.

James is a DZone Zone Leader and has posted 231 posts at DZone. You can read more from them at their website.