Eclipse Foundation Drives $9 Billion in Open Source Innovation

Global open source foundation finishes 2018 with 360+ open source projects, 162+ million lines of code written and more than 275 sponsor members


OTTAWA, Dec. 18, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- OTTAWA, December 18, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Eclipse Foundation, the platform for open collaboration and innovation, finishes the year 2018 driving innovation through open source in a wide range of global initiatives, including Internet of Things, Java runtimes, GeoSpatial, Automotive, Model-based engineering, IDEs, and emerging technologies. Serving as a platform enabling open collaboration for the world’s new digital economy -- managed by an efficient staff of just 30 full-time professionals -- the Eclipse Foundation now boasts oversight of more than 360 projects and 1,550+ code committers who have contributed more than 162 million lines of code to date with a estimated software value of approximately $9 billion.

“Founded nearly 15 years ago, the Eclipse Foundation has established itself as a leader in open innovation, creating an open, vendor-neutral, and transparent platform backed by more than 275 community and vendor sponsors,” said Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Foundation. “Our members are at the leading edge of one of the world’s most popular enterprise software platforms, Jakarta EE, and together we’re reshaping entire industries by innovating in developer tools, IoT, automotive software and more. Our shared success with our global community is a testament to the incredible power of open collaboration.”

In 2018 the Foundation achieved many key milestones, including the unveiling of the future path for cloud native enterprise Java -- Jakarta EE -- the Eclipse Photon simultaneous release, collaborating with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation to launch the Kubernetes IoT Edge Working Group, and more.

One of the open source pioneers of this revolutionary new approach to creating software, the Foundation provides a level playing field for vendors and community members to develop and innovate software rapidly in a collaborative environment with robust legal and governance rules to protect the interests of all participants. Within Eclipse Working Group industry collaborations, the Foundation today oversees the governance and processes for members to collaborate on technology roadmap and software development and release cycles for specific technology domains. These include:

  • Jakarta EE Working Group, an industry consortium behind cloud-native Java that approves specifications, establishes the technical roadmap, and ensures compatibility via open source compatibility kits;
  • Eclipse IoT Working Group provides collaborative guidelines for implementation of the standards, services and frameworks that enable an open Internet of Things;
  • LocationTech Working Group focuses on open source geospatial technologies;
  • openMDM Working Group provides tools and systems, qualification kits and adapters for standardized and vendor independent management of measurement data in accordance with the ASAM ODS standard;
  • openPASS Working Group develops core frameworks and modules for the safety assessment of driving assistance and automated driving systems;
  • Eclipse Science Working Group is a collaborative effort involving industry, academia, and government to develop reusable open source software for scientific research.

"Since its inception in 2004, the Eclipse Foundation has been a leader in open source collaboration and innovation. IBM is proud to have been a strategic member from the beginning,” said John Duimovich, Distinguished Engineer for Hybrid Cloud Developer Experience at IBM. “In our experience, a great group of developers collaborates through the Foundation. The results have been an impressive set of developer communities, fostering innovation on some really great software. We are fully committed to the Eclipse Foundation as a platform for accelerating communities and delivering value to our customers.”

“The Eclipse Foundation is a proven model for collaboration and innovation within a global community of like-minded software engineers who simply want to solve big problems and create the coolest things possible,” said Ivar Grimstad, Project Management Committee Lead for Eclipse Enterprise for Java and Principal Consultant at Cybercom Group. “The Foundation takes care of all the governance, paperwork and process so we can focus on what we do best, write great code and build new things that have a positive impact on the world.”

About The Eclipse Foundation
The Eclipse Foundation provides our global community of individuals and organizations with a mature, scalable and business-friendly environment for open source software collaboration and innovation. The Foundation is home to Jakarta EE, the Eclipse IDE, and over 350 open source projects, including runtimes, tools and frameworks for a wide range of technology domains such as IoT, automotive, geospatial, systems engineering and many others. The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit organization supported by over 275 members, including industry leaders who value open source as a key enabler for business strategy. To learn more, follow us on Twitter @EclipseFdn, LinkedIn or visit eclipse.org.

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Lonn Johnston
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