FAQ

Regatta Workbench is a free, open source rowing regatta results management platform designed to leverage and demonstrate the power an open computing platform and data standards for the management of rowing regatta information. Regatta Workbench is licensed under the GNU GPL version 2.

The Project is an open source software development project dedicated to providing a robust, easy-to-use, platform for the development of integrated tools across the full regatta lifecycle. It is composed of three subprojects, Regatta Workbench Platform, Regatta Markup Language (RML), and Regatta Workbench Tools.

The success of the Regatta Workbench platform depends on how well it enables contributors to the regatta management process to build integrated tools and products across the whole regatta information lifecycle. These contributors include news publishers, regatta registrars, local organizing committees, governing bodies and others. The mission of the Regatta Workbench Project is to adapt and evolve the Regatta Workbench platform, the Regatta Markup Language and associated tools to meet the needs of the rowing regatta community, so the vision of Regatta Workbench and RML as a widely adopted platform is realized.

Workbench started its life in 2003 as a replacement for a results spreadsheet for the Jack Speakmon Memorial Regatta, a head race held in Columbus, Ohio. Since then it has grown and matured.

Here are some of the sprint and head regattas that used Regatta Workbench in 2007:

The author is me, Scott Dybiec. I have been a rowing enthusiast ever since I discovered the sport in 1980 while attending high school in Marietta, Ohio. I have rowed, coached, directed regattas, and all the other fun stuff you do as part of smaller rowing organizations. Right now I row some, but primarily coach the competitive Masters program at the Greater Columbus Rowing Association in Columbus, Ohio.

Professionally, I work for a technology company and, since I was 13, have always enjoyed working with computers Writing software is fun for me.

I estimate that over the past 3 years I've invested around $120,000 worth of software development effort in Regatta Workbench. It takes a lot of time and energy to develop software. I'm making the software freely available in hopes of promoting and gaining broad adoption of the standards underlying Workbench --- data standards for exchanging and archiving regatta-related information. Once things settle down a bit, I intend to write a couple technology articles based on my experiences and lessons learned developing Regatta Workbench.

The Eclipse Platform is an open extensible IDE for anything and yet nothing in particular. The Eclipse Platform provides building blocks and a foundation for constructing and running integrated software-development tools. The Eclipse Platform allows tool builders to independently develop tools that integrate with other people's tools so seamlessly you can't tell where one tool ends and another starts.

The Eclipse SDK (software developer kit) is the consolidation of the components produced by the three Eclipse Project subprojects (Platform, JDT - Java development tools, and PDE - Plug-in development environment) into a single download.

Together these pieces provide a feature-rich development environment that allows the developer to efficiently create tools that integrate seamlessly into the Eclipse Platform.

The Eclipse SDK consists of software produced by the Eclipse Project combined with third party software from other open source projects. The software produced by the Eclipse Project is made available under the Common Public License. Third party components are made available under their own licenses. The detailed licensing information can be found in the Eclipse.org Software User Agreement (notice.html) file in root directory of the SDK download. Licensing for third party components is described in about.html files in the respective subdirectories.

The Eclipse Project is one of the top-level projects hosted at www.eclipse.org. The Eclipse Project is organized into subprojects. Each of these in turn has one or more components.

• For more information on the organization of the Eclipse Project, read the Eclipse Project Charter.
• To learn more about the subprojects of the Eclipse Project, visit the Eclipse Project page and click on any of its subprojects.
• For information on a specific component, see the subproject page that contains the component, and the component page.

Eclipse.org is a consortium of software-development-tool vendors formed to foster the development . The eclipse community was formed in order to create better development environments and product integration. The community shares an interest in creating products that are easily inter-operable, because they are based upon plug-in technology and a common platform. By collaborating and sharing core integration technology, vendors who build on the Eclipse Platform can concentrate on their areas of expertise and the creation of new technology.

The Eclipse Project page contains a link to the plan outlining the goals for the next major release of the Eclipse Project.

In addition, each component page provides information about work in progress.