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Not all trains run on time, but the Eclipse Foundation has kept to its schedule with its annual release train, this year named "Ganymede." For the third year in a row, the Eclipse community has delivered, on the same day as in previous years, numerous software updates across a wide range of projects. This year's iteration includes software that spans 23 projects and represents over 18 million lines of code. Highlights of the release include the new p2 provisioning platform, new Equinox security features, new Ecore modeling tools, and support for SOA.

The recent Facebook rumors have come true -- the social networking company is making much of its third-party application development platform open source. The company announced the change one year after it launched Facebook Platform. "On the anniversary of our platform launch, we want to give back to the developer community. As Facebook Platform continues to mature, we've been hearing from a lot of you that you'd like more tools and better information on how Facebook Platform actually works," noted Facebook's Ami Vora on the Facebook Developers News blog.

Taking on the likes of Adobe and Microsoft, Sun Microsystems on Tuesday unveiled its new JavaFX family of products for building rich Internet applications. Based on Sun's longstanding Java platform, JavaFX includes a runtime and a tools suite that Web scripters, designers and developers can use to quickly build and deliver rich interactive applications for desktop, mobile devices, TV and other platforms. JavaFX Desktop for desktop browsers and applications will be available this fall, while JavaFX Mobile will ship in spring 2009. JavaFX TV is due to be available summer 2009.

Google has opened up a new sandbox for developers designed to entice them into building richer social networking gadgets for iGoogle. iGoogle is basically a customizable home page for individuals that uses Web-based "gadgets" to deliver content to the page. The new sandbox will let developers continue to build gadgets for individuals too, of course, but the news is that iGoogle's new social features for developers will change iGoogle from a backyard toy to a full-fledged public playground.

Jack Hughes, cofounder of TopCoder, admits that if he were to compete in one of his company's online computer programming competitions he'd be laughed off the screen. Hughes, a computer programmer, said his inability to write elegant code at cyber-speed doesn't bother him a whit. Since 2001, the privately owned Glastonbury, Conn., company has summoned some of the world's best programmers to its Web site with the lure of online glory -- and cash.

Microsoft is continuing to make good on its promises of openness. The Redmond software behemoth posted an additional 14,000 pages of preliminary versions of technical documentation of Microsoft protocols that should help third-party developers -- including open source developers -- build more interoperable applications. The latest round of protocols are for Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. As of this moment, Microsoft has publicly posted more than 44,000 pages of protocol documentation, the company said.

Tony Baer has a great rundown of Monday's EclipseCon OSGi-based runtime Equinox news. Extending the Eclipse community's unity to runtimes makes a ton of sense, given that developers can focus on the applications and business logic and become far less concerned with complex deployment issues. Write once, run anywhere? Eclipse's component development plan, called "CODA" (Component Oriented Development and Assembly), hinges on Eclipse's Equinox, which is the foundation's OSGi-based runtime and a part of the new Eclipse Runtime project.

So daylight-saving time has just begun in various parts of the world, and that means many of us -- including the normally razor-sharp team here at LinuxInsider -- may be reeling a little bit. An hour's sleep is a big deal, so "springing ahead" -- which always sounds so chipper and perky -- can actually make the ensuing days feel long and tough. Which brings us to the topic of today's column: Tough projects. We're not talking just about projects that require effort, or that take some time to get done.

So daylight-saving time has just begun in various parts of the world, and that means many of us -- including the normally razor-sharp team here at LinuxInsider -- may be reeling a little bit. An hour's sleep is a big deal, so "springing ahead" -- which always sounds so chipper and perky -- can actually make the ensuing days feel long and tough. Which brings us to the topic of today's column: Tough projects. We're not talking just about projects that require effort, or that take some time to get done.

So daylight-saving time has just begun in various parts of the world, and that means many of us -- including the normally razor-sharp team here at LinuxInsider -- may be reeling a little bit. An hour's sleep is a big deal, so "springing ahead" -- which always sounds so chipper and perky -- can actually make the ensuing days feel long and tough. Which brings us to the topic of today's column: Tough projects. We're not talking just about projects that require effort, or that take some time to get done.