Meet This Year's Top Contributor Nominees

Benjamin Cabe

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

Benjamin: I am a software engineer, working in southern France (in Toulouse, “la ville Rose”!). I have a great passion for software development and spend part of my free time taking photos or just hibernating.

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

Benjamin: When I’m not writing patches (PDE, Modeling projects, Platform,…) or triaging bugs, I’m participating in pretty cool posters and shirts contests. I also try to spread the good word about Eclipse giving conferences, writing articles, and so on.

DZone: How long have you been involved with Eclipse?

Benjamin: I’ve been using Eclipse for about two years and a half, and have been involved in the community since then. I’ve been especially contributing to the PDE area, submitting patches and trying to help people on the newsgroups or mailing-lists. I’m also very active within the French Eclipse Community, giving conferences, helping organizing Demo Camps, and blogging – in French, because I believe Eclipse lacks French sources of information.

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

Benjamin: I love Mylyn. It saves me a huge amount of time when doing bug triaging or attaching patches and contexts to bugs. The second project on my list is Ecore Tools, which is a must-have of my daily job.

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

Benjamin: The e4 project arrival has been something very exciting, and a very challenging for the community. I’m looking forward to seeing its evolution during 2009. I’m also sort of curious about all this cloud-computing buzz and wondering how Eclipse will jump on the bandwagon.

DZone: What is your full time job?

Benjamin: I’m an Eclipse Expert at Anyware Technologies, working on the creation of integrated solutions based on Eclipse. I’ve a tendency to put models everywhere, and it has proven to be a –very– good thing so far :-). I also have a strong technological monitoring activity.

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

Benjamin: I do believe that everyone can help, and make Eclipse a better platform. Contributing is as simple as opening a bug or giving a hint on a newsgroup! In a different context, kiva.org is also a great example of this “every single person can do a lot” way of thinking I deeply believe in.
On top of that, digging into the Eclipse code is a great opportunity to learn about some arcane Eclipse mechanisms, and to improve my knowledge of best software development practices in general.

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

Benjamin: No, not really. If I don’t have time enough because of my projects, I at least try to follow the newsgroups and Bugzilla in a sort of background job :-)

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

Benjamin: I will of course still be contributing to Eclipse if I’m not elected, but I’d be really happy to see my participation recognized, and be encouraged to continue my efforts! Oh, and by the way, if I’m elected, I’ll start blogging in English! :-)

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