Open-source foundation celebrates birthday: The Eclipse Foundation turns 20
The Eclipse Foundation can look back on a twenty-year history and now hosts hundreds of open-source projects.
(Image: Eclipse Foundation)
This week, the Eclipse Foundation celebrates its twentieth anniversary. It looks back on a eventful history that includes an international relocation, the stewardship of over 400 open-source projects, and expansion into areas such as automotive and mobility, as well as the Internet of Things (IoT). heise Developer spoke with Managing Director Mike Milinkovich and takes a look at current developments.
Prepared for the Next Two Decades
While February 2nd twenty years ago is listed on Wikipedia as the founding date-- the day when, according to Mike Milinkovich, the first official press release was issued -- the Foundation already celebrated its actual birthday on January 28th and announced it on X (formerly Twitter).
Milinkovich said in an interview with heise Developer that twenty years is a remarkable milestone in this dynamic business. Over the years, the Eclipse Foundation has evolved from a single IDE platform to overseeing sustainable, enterprise-friendly open-source projects and open specifications in various fields. These include automotive, open-source Java, IoT, and embedded systems.
Considering the growth in the past year alone -- due to initiatives such as the Software Defined Vehicle Working Group, Eclipse Adoptium runtimes, and the Real-Time Operating System Eclipse ThreadX, which emerged from Microsoft's contribution of Azure RTOS -- as well as further planned industry collaborations, Managing Director Mike Milinkovich looks positively to the future: "We are well-positioned to exert global influence in the coming twenty years and beyond."
The non-profit Eclipse Foundation currently boasts over 360 members -- organizations that fund it through annual financial contributions depending on their membership type -- and oversees over 400 open-source projects, including the Eclipse IDE, Adoptium, and Jakarta EE.
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Younger Than the Eclipse IDE
The founding of the Eclipse Foundation took place when the Eclipse IDE had already been existing for over two years. Its goal was to manage the open-source project. The source code for the namesake development environment was released by IBM on November 7, 2001, which is why it already celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2021.
The Eclipse IDE began as a Java IDE and is still often regarded as such, but the development environment can be used not only for Java but also for other programming languages. For example, the version "Eclipse IDE for Enterprise Java and Web Developers" is available, which includes support for JavaScript and TypeScript.
Since the autumn of 2018, the IDE has been released in a quarterly release cycle and is named after the last month of the respective quarter. The current version Eclipse 2023-12 is designed for the LTS (Long-term Support) version Java 21.
Successful Relocation to Europe
In May 2020, after 16 years of existence, the Eclipse Foundation announced its intention to move its legal headquarters from Canada to Europe. The move to Brussels was completed in January of the following year. To this end, the foundation established the Eclipse Foundation AISBL (Association internationale sans but lucratif) -- a legal form used in Belgium for non-profit organizations, called International Association without Lucrative Purpose (IVoG) in German.
The relocation to Europe was partly logical, as numerous European companies are among the founding members of the Eclipse Foundation, including German companies such as Bosch, Daimler TSS, and SAP, and according to Milinkovich, it is the largest open-source foundation in Europe. This is also reflected in conference behavior: the European EclipseCon initially took place alongside the US edition of the annual conference before evolving into the Foundation's larger and eventually sole conference. Last autumn, it was held for the 17th time in Ludwigsburg, where Mike Milinkovich told heise Developer in an interview that he was still very satisfied with the move to Europe.
On the other hand, the relocation of the foundation's legal headquarters also brought the advantage that it is no longer directly under US influence and is thus outside the crossfire of the trade war between the USA and China. One of the members of the Eclipse Foundation is the Chinese conglomerate Huawei, whose devices were banned from the USA in 2022.
Collaboration with the OpenAtom Foundation
As early as 2021, the Eclipse Foundation and the OpenAtom Foundation, the first and only Chinese open-source foundation, announced a joint strategic initiative regarding OpenHarmony OS, an open-source variant of Huawei's IoT and mobile operating system Harmony OS. This week, the two foundations have now signed an official declaration of cooperation. According to Milinkovich, it is the first time that two open-source foundations have come together to develop an open-source project and its associated industry ecosystem.
The collaboration concerns Eclipse Oniro for OpenHarmony, which is built on the OpenHarmony operating system. Oniro extends the OpenHarmony code with add-ons for European and global markets, such as React Native support, an IDE based on Eclipse Theia, and a Servo web engine. The open-source project is currently in the Eclipse Foundation's incubator and lists Huawei and TypeFox as active members.
As Milinkovich also pointed out last year, the Eclipse Foundation holds a unique position in Europe as the home of digital sovereignty: The open-source implementation work for various European initiatives in the context of digital sovereignty, such as European data spaces, Catena-X, and Digital Twins, lies with the Eclipse Foundation.
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All the Foundation's projects are listed on the Eclipse website, and the latest activities can also be followed there.
In this spirit, heise Developer wishes the Eclipse Foundation all the best for its first two decades and continues to watch the progress of the projects it oversees with great interest.
(mai)
