Meet This Year's Top Contributor Nominees

Frank Becker

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

Frank: Sure, my name is Frank Becker and live in Mainz, Germany with my wife and three children. I have two sons (13 and 10 years) and a girl (22 months).

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

Frank: I contribute to the Mylyn project, mostly to the Bugzilla Component and occasionally fixes to the Tasks Component.

DZone: How long have you been involved with Eclipse?

Frank: The first bug I fixed was for a platform (mac) detection bug in the task editor back in May of 2007. Since then I've been a regular contributor to the Mylyn project.

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

Frank: Yes, this is Mylyn.

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

Frank: In 2008 I was able to contribute a number of fixes and new features to Mylyn.  So far 2009 is shaping up well as I've just become a committer on Mylyn!

DZone: What is your full time job?

Frank: I was working for LRP bank (http://lrp.de/ now http://rlp-bank.de/) and LBBW (http://lbbw.de/) savings bank. Since December of last year I've been working for R+V (http://ruv.de/), an insurance company.

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

Frank: I enjoy contributing to Eclipse because I wanted to refine my Java programming skills since my day job consists mostly of work on zOS Host with Cobol and other less commonly used languages.

DZone: Is it difficult for you to find the time to contribute to the Eclipse community?

Frank: Fortunately I'm able to find time in the evenings when my children have gone to bed.  I'll take a couple hours in the evening to relax, watch some TV and code/communicate with the Eclipse Mylyn team.

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

Frank: This is difficult to answer, perhaps best left to the community.  For the past couple years I've enjoyed contributing my time and code and have participated in discussion where I could.

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