At a Glance:
- Involved in open source since: 2005
- Works for: Omnifish OU
- Eclipse Foundation contributor since: 2018
- Involved in: Eclipse ORB, Jakarta Persistence, Jakarta EE TCK, Jakarta Faces, Eclipse Epicyro, GlassFish
- Committer to: All of the above, and a project lead on GlassFish
- Eclipse Foundation committer since: 2018
Can you tell us a bit about your background as a developer and with open source?
I first got involved with software when I was quite young. I tagged along with some friends to some lectures on programming languages for children. I was two weeks behind, so they had to catch me up. I was hooked.
Now, I have an MSc in software engineering from West-Bohemian University in Pilsen, and I’ve worked across many companies in the software development space.
My first encounter with open source was back in 2005 with Apache Turbine and Tomcat when the company I was working for at the time started using them. Tomcat of course is one of the relatives of Eclipse GlassFish, which I’m heavily involved with today.
From that initial involvement, I got involved with a major government project in 2007, which used GlassFish and had a huge amount of technical debt. That was a great experience for many reasons. I spent 10 years with that project before leaving for my next project. As I was leaving, the project was well maintained and being continually upgraded, receiving new features and, as far as I know, its development still continues with success.
How did that lead to your involvement with the Eclipse Foundation?
The project used nearly all specifications of Jakarta EE, so during my time there, I got quite familiar with these specifications. While working on the project, I sent a patch for Oracle GlassFish. Nothing happened, but a few friends of mine put me onto Payara. A few years later, I joined the Payara company.
During this time and before, I’d been watching with interest the evolution of Java EE and the transition into Jakarta EE. I was quite happy when Jakarta EE started, as it meant that this wasn’t the end of the path Java EE had been on. I tried to help out where I could, improving TCK tests and so on. Payara ended up asking me to represent them on the Persistence and Faces projects as well. So, around this time I got involved with several open source foundations, including the Eclipse Foundation after Oracle donated GlassFish there.
When I left Payara to start my own company with several of my colleagues, I got even more directly involved, particularly with GlassFish and Jakarta EE. But I also ended up doing some work for Apache and MojoHaus because GlassFish uses some of their projects.
How have you found that experience, working in open source and as a committer at the Eclipse Foundation?
I would describe the Eclipse Foundation as a well-oiled machine. It runs very smoothly. Unlike in the early days of the Java Community Process (JCP), when I would send a pull request and often wait a long time for a response, at the Eclipse Foundation, things move much faster—usually within a few days or weeks, someone gets back to you. Of course, sometimes you do need to follow up or hunt someone down, but that’s the nature of working with other people: you’re communicating.
In the Western world, when people say they’re happy with something, they often actually mean things are acceptable or good enough. In Eastern Europe, where I’m from, if we say we’re happy with something we mean it’s perfect. All that to say, I’m going in the right direction to be happy with my open source involvement at the Eclipse Foundation. But there is quite a bit of work left to be done on GlassFish, which is where I’m spending most of my time and energy these days.
Any advice for someone considering getting involved with open source or as a committer?
In general, I’d say there are two kinds of developers. One type is like a friend of mine. He switches technologies basically every year to the latest and greatest development that works perfectly, and everything else he used is dead to him now.
Another type is more like me. I’m very interested in the evolution of the technology. I find it interesting and rewarding to work on evaluating problems and fixing them, helping the technology improve over time.
Both ways are valid. But the latter approach is part of what drew me to open source and part of why I find it so rewarding. It’s an iterative process focused on fixing things that don’t work and improving things that do. As a developer, if you’re more interested in simply having something that works, open source may not be as attractive to you. But if you, like me, get great satisfaction out of improving the technology you use, open source can be extremely rewarding.
And at an organisation like the Eclipse Foundation, the process itself is more streamlined than how things were in the Java Community Process days.