I'm changing job and leaving Pivolis for Microsoft! I would never have believed this possible a month ago...

It appears that Microsoft is serious about Java and Open Source after all. They contacted me for my work on Maven. As a matter of fact, their own MSBuild system is not working as well as they would have liked and they are interested in reusing Maven as a build scaffolding and develop numerous Java and .Net plugins on top of it and integrate it all in the next version of Visual Studio (which will sport lots of new features for Java development too). This is all part of their new 2007 plans for implementing Software Factories. I can't tell you much more at this stage.

The best news is that I won't be working alone on this as they are setting up a full scale Java Team. Yeah that rocks! Some friends from our Open source group in Paris have also been recruited (check Ludovic's , Jeremi's , Didier's and Francois's blogs).

I'll be blogging more about it, stay tuned...

Update (3rd April 2006): Of course this was an April's fool. However there's some truth in it. I'm indeed going to Redmond the week of the 10th of April. Microsoft is inviting 70 people using competing technologies from all over the world. The idea seems to be twofolds: Microsoft will present what they are working on and we are expected to critique/provide feedback on what they're doing compared to what we are doing using our technologies. Sounds pretty fun. It seems this is something similar to the event that Matt Raible attended (more here, here and here). I'll blog more on this when I know more.