In November of 2001, IBM launched Eclipse, an open source project that aims at creating a common development-tool framework. IBM donated some $40 million of its software to the new venture. In June of this year, Eclipse released the first version of its open source tool framework. Last week, on 18 September, Eclipse released Version 2 of the framework.

Did you ever wish that you could have an extra three to five hours per week? Hours that you could use to read a new business book, work on your golf swing, or perhaps spend with friends or family. Spending the extra time is never the issue! The question is, how does one find those free hours?

Your business model is the manner in which you charge customers for your products or services -- the way you make money. Every software business model is associated with a license model. A license model is the terms and conditions (or rights and restrictions) that you grant to a user and/or customer of your software as defined by your business model.

Traditional plan-driven project management methods offer (a hope at least) project results to be predictably achieved; that planned costs, schedules, and functionality (scope) can be achieved by careful planning and control measures combined with repeatable processes.

Recent experiences have taught me that there are different ways we can treat information given to us by others. A few months ago, I was working with a contractor on the opposite coast who was building a hardware and software system. We sent the contractor a statement of work and a product specification. The contractor's group was working on a high-level design and sent us several preliminary ideas.