www.erlang-projects.org
Mickaël Rémond <mickael.remond@erlang-fr.org>
Thierry Mallard <thierry.mallard@erlang-fr.org>
  Proposal for an Erlang foundation

Erlang User Conference '04

21st. October 2004



      


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Erlang: What did we achieve ?

     Erlang/OTP rely on a strong and powerful technical asset. 
It stays very high in network & server development

     Some potential killer-apps (Yaws, Wings3D, Tsunami, Ejabberd, 
J-EAI, ...)

     Maturity: 10th Erlang User Conference, 18th year for Erlang

     Nice progression in statistics on Erlang.org

     More companies producing Erlang products and software

     Open Source since 1998



      


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Erlang: What's next ?

We still have significant weaknesses :

Mindshare

     Marketing: despite being a top technical environment Erlang is not 
largely covered in computing media.

     Userbase: We need to accelerate the growth of the Erlang users base.

     In a competive world, if we do not grow very fast, we are decreasing 
relatively to the other alternatives. This means that:

     We are losing opportunities to develop Erlang in new interesting 
environments and to replace legacy systems

     We might lose the lead we current have over the competition.



      


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A common effort is needed to promote and 
develop Erlang mindshare

     To show the industry that Erlang is used by many companies and is here 
to stay (potential customers are worried)

     To help increase userbase, and increase Erlang business

     To make it easier to hire Erlang developers

     To make it easier to find Erlang services and consultancy companies

     To allow coordination of developments needed common software, 
bindings, extensions or demonstrators

     To help develop Erlang as a strong marketing point for Erlang products 
and software (Branding)



      


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Toward an Erlang foundation (1/2)

     We propose to turn Erlang-projects into an Erlang foundation to 
gather companies having interests in Erlang development.

     A place to discuss what would help companies doing better 
business with Erlang.

     discuss and coordinate developments that will help improving 
the Erlang environment:

     Commonly needed libraries

     Marketing tools

     Enhancing OTP



      


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Toward an Erlang foundation (2/2)

     To provide a hardware and software infrastructure for 
members to participate in the foundation activity:

     Metafrog to coordinate developments,

     Erlang application hosting,

     Participation in events (conferences, booth on expos, etc.)

     Creation of local country based representatives of 
Erlang-projects: Local country based representings for the 
Erlang-Project foundation.



      


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Examples from current 
Erlang-projects activities
Metafrog

     Coordination platform for Erlang 
development efforts
     Showcase for big Erlang-based application. 
Demonstrate Erlang/OTP and Yaws 
high-performance and reliability
     Simple and efficient collaborative platform.



      


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Examples from current 
Erlang-projects activities
Solutions Linux 2004 booth
     Presence of Erlang projects on the expo: Booth in the non-profit area.

     Conference on Erlang and clustering.

     Lots of interesting contacts.

     Presence with other consortium such as Objectweb on the expo.

It was important to be there for Erlang promotion and helped 
dissemination of the technology.

Conference and booth for Solutions Linux 2005 
already planned



      


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Examples from current 
Erlang-projects activities
Erlang REPOS

     preconfigured Erlang environment and applications (on CDROM, 
dumpable on hard drive).

     Big marketing impact (hundreds of downloads already). 
Magazines are interested for cover CD diffusion.

     Has proven very useful to distribute software 
(J-EAI)

     Has a strong impact on multiplatform compliance 
improvement 
(Example: Patches for Yaws, ejabberd, etc.).



      


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Examples from current 
Erlang-projects activities
Other ideas:

     Pluggable distribution layer in Erlang ?

     Improving Erlang interoperability is needed. We need to provide 
robust and easy tools to quickly develop multi-platform binding 
to C libraries.

     More interoperability libraries are needed (SOAP, WSDL, ...).

     Develop example web applications that will prove Erlang high 
performance (Example RUBIS implementation, comparable with 
Java and PHP).



      


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Erlang-projects foundation

Built on the same model than the Apache Foundation.

See http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html

Erlang-projects foundation mission could be stated as:

Develop and promote valuable projects that could turn 
Erlang into a long-term solution for middleware 
development, server applications and highly concurrent 
graphical user applications.

Please do not hesitate to promote your own mission



      


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Erlang-projects foundation

Discuss organisation:

     Fees (each euro in communication through Erlang 
project will have more impact than isolated 
communication).

     Define the long-term mission

     Roadmap

     Bootstrap period

     Executive board for the foundation. This is the basis for 
a lightweight organisation of the foundation.



      


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Erlang-projects foundation


Open discussion