| <?php |
| /** |
| * Copyright (c) 2020 Eclipse Foundation. |
| * |
| * This program and the accompanying materials are made |
| * available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License 2.0 |
| * which is available at https://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0/ |
| * |
| * Contributors: |
| * Eric Poirier (Eclipse Foundation) - Initial implementation |
| * |
| * SPDX-License-Identifier: EPL-2.0 |
| */ |
| ?> |
| <h1><?php print $pageTitle;?></h1> |
| <ol> |
| <li><a href="#q_1">What is the Eclipse Foundation?</a></li> |
| <li><a href="#q_2">What are its main goals?</a></li> |
| <li><a href="#q_3">Why is the Eclipse Foundation moving to Europe?</a></li> |
| <li><a href="#q_4">What does the Eclipse Foundation hope to achieve with its move to Europe?</a></li> |
| <li><a href="#q_5">How does open source contribute to the global economy?</a></li> |
| <li><a href="#q_6">What does the Eclipse Foundation offer its members?</a></li> |
| <li><a href="#q_7">What does this move mean for members of the Foundation?</a></li> |
| <li><a href="#q_8">What does this move mean for project committers and contributors?</a></li> |
| <li><a href="#q_9">What does this move mean for European stakeholders?</a></li> |
| <li><a href="#q_10">What does this move mean for global stakeholders?</a></li> |
| <li><a href="#q_11">Does this mean you are shutting down Eclipse Foundation-US?</a></li> |
| <li><a href="#q_12">Does this mean you are shutting down Eclipse Foundation Europe GmbH?</a></li> |
| <li><a href="#q_13">Does the Eclipse Foundation have a patent policy?</a></li> |
| <li><a href="#q_14">How can I support this move to Europe?</a></li> |
| </ol> |
| <p id="q_1"><strong>Q. What is the Eclipse Foundation?</strong></p> |
| <ol type="A"> |
| <li> |
| <p>Established in 2004, the Eclipse Foundation is a Delaware incorporated independent non-profit |
| corporation with operations in Europe, the United States, and Canada. The Foundation provides |
| a 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 the Eclipse IDE, Jakarta EE, and over 375 and growing list of open |
| source projects, including runtimes, tools, and frameworks for many technology areas, |
| including: </p> |
| <ul class="margin-bottom-10"> |
| <li>cloud and edge applications, </li> |
| <li>the Internet of Things, </li> |
| <li>artificial intelligence, </li> |
| <li>automotive, </li> |
| <li>systems engineering, </li> |
| <li>digital ledger technologies, and </li> |
| <li>open processor designs.</li> |
| </ul> |
| <p>The Eclipse Foundation is supported by over 300 members, including industry leaders who have |
| embraced open source as a key enabler for their business strategies.</p> |
| </li> |
| </ol> |
| <p id="q_2"><strong>Q. What are its main goals?</strong></p> |
| <ol type="A"> |
| <li> |
| <p>The Eclipse Foundation exists to advance open source projects and to cultivate communities |
| and business ecosystems around the globe. The Foundation provides four key services to the |
| Eclipse community: </p> |
| |
| <ul class="margin-bottom-10"> |
| <li>Vendor-neutral governance and processes,</li> |
| <li>Intellectual property (IP) management and licensing, </li> |
| <li>Ecosystem development and marketing, and </li> |
| <li>IT infrastructure. </li> |
| </ul> |
| <p>Open source innovation will drive the technological solutions expected to transform the |
| global economy. The Eclipse Foundation strives to enable these solutions by being the leading |
| community for individuals and organizations to collaborate on commercially-friendly open |
| source, for the benefit of industries and developer communities worldwide.</p> |
| </li> |
| </ol> |
| <p id="q_3"><strong>Q. Why is the Eclipse Foundation moving to Europe?</strong></p> |
| <ol type="A"> |
| <li> |
| <p>This move will provide global stakeholders more choice for their strategic open source |
| initiatives. We believe that more choice and greater diversity will be of benefit to both the |
| global open source communities, and for the industries that rely upon and collaborate with |
| them. The Eclipse Foundation aspires to be a truly global institution, now with a new European |
| home. </p> |
| <p>To an extent, this move is merely confirmation of the Foundation’s current reality and |
| global growth trajectory. The Eclipse Foundation is already the largest open source |
| organization in Europe as measured in staff, projects, developers, and members. One hundred |
| seventy members and over nine hundred committers are based in Europe and we have operated our |
| subsidiary Eclipse Foundation Europe GmbH for seven years. </p> |
| <p>By moving our legal residence from the United States to Europe, our goal is to create a |
| global institution that builds on our existing membership base, active developer |
| community, and strong institutional relationships, and leverages a competitive level playing |
| field to enable the free flow of open software innovation throughout the entire world.</p> |
| </li> |
| </ol> |
| |
| <p id="q_4"><strong>Q. What does the Eclipse Foundation hope to achieve with its move to Europe?</strong></p> |
| <ol type="A"> |
| <li> |
| <p>By moving to Europe, we aim to advance open source projects that can transform the global |
| economy, for the benefit of industries and developer communities worldwide. The free flow of |
| software innovation is critical to economic activity in all countries, in all industry |
| sectors. From our new base in Europe, we will accelerate the growth of a global, sustainable |
| ecosystem with a competitive and level playing field that delivers broad benefits to |
| developers and industry.</p> |
| </li> |
| </ol> |
| <p id="q_5"><strong>Q. How does open source contribute to the global economy?</strong></p> |
| <ol type="A"> |
| <li> |
| <p>Open source innovation is crucial for the advancement of new technologies across multiple |
| industries, thus a key factor in the continued growth of the global economy. The open source |
| model — how it is developed, shared, and used — is central to technological |
| innovation and digitalization in many industry sectors including transportation, logistics, |
| healthcare, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, energy, manufacturing, and more. These |
| industries rely upon a global supply chain of open source software which fuels their growth, |
| innovation, and digitalization strategies. Enterprises and industrials around the world are |
| fueling the next wave of open source adoption and, in turn, contributing to economic activity |
| and business growth. To sustain open source and thus economies across the world, open source |
| foundations are necessary to provide core capabilities like legal and intellectual property |
| assurance, vendor-neutral governance, trademark stewardship for projects, and more.</p> |
| </li> |
| </ol> |
| <p id="q_6"><strong>Q. What does the Eclipse Foundation offer its members?</strong></p> |
| <ol type="A"> |
| <li> |
| <p>Membership in the Eclipse Foundation allows businesses and developers the opportunity to |
| participate in a global, community-driven open ecosystem. Organizations and individuals join |
| the Eclipse Foundation because they want to take an active role in supporting sustainable, |
| commercializable open source technologies. In doing so, they protect their strategic |
| investments by participating in defining priorities for advancing the technologies they care |
| about, while sharing costs and driving industry adoption.</p> |
| <p> |
| Our members value our unique governance model and processes. In particular, Eclipse Foundation |
| <a href="/org/workinggroups/explore.php">Working Groups</a> provide an |
| open and vendor-neutral governance framework for individuals and organizations to engage in |
| collaborative development to deliver high quality, scalable, and sustainable code that |
| enterprises can use to build commercial products, grow revenues and drive market adoption. |
| Through our <a href="/projects/dev_process/">Eclipse Development |
| Process </a>we offer members a set of best practices that guide developers during the |
| process of starting and advancing open source projects. Members also benefit from our legal |
| and intellectual property management processes, which enable them to fully comply with |
| antitrust laws, and provide legal assurance that they can successfully embed open source |
| technology into their commercial products. |
| </p> |
| </li> |
| </ol> |
| |
| <p id="q_7"><strong>Q. What does this move mean for members of the Foundation?</strong></p> |
| <ol type="A"> |
| <li> |
| <p>As part of the move, we will create a new membership-based, open source, nonprofit foundation |
| legally domiciled in Europe with policies and procedures allowing seamless international |
| collaboration. Specifically, we will be creating a Belgian international non-profit |
| association domiciled in Brussels. In parallel, we will establish a modern open source project |
| development forge based on GitLab and physically hosted in Europe. Both the Belgian non-profit |
| association and the GitLab forge are expected to be in place and operating this summer.</p> |
| <p>The Eclipse and Eclipse Foundation names, trademarks, and brands will be controlled by the |
| new European entity, as will the core policies such as antitrust and intellectual property. |
| Going forward our membership dues will be stated in Euros.</p> |
| <p>The Eclipse Foundation, while currently a USA incorporated not-for-profit organization, |
| manages its operations split between Canada and Europe, so there will be minimal to no impact |
| to our operations.</p> |
| </li> |
| </ol> |
| |
| <p id="q_8"><strong>Q. What does this move mean for project committers and contributors?</strong></p> |
| <ol type="A"> |
| <li> |
| <p>The short version is: keep doing what you’re doing. In the near-term, it will be “business as |
| usual” for committers and contributors of Eclipse projects. In the medium term, the Foundation |
| has plans to develop a new GitLab-based forge physically hosted in Europe and offering it as a |
| choice for any projects that would like to use it. Both the Belgian non-profit association and |
| the GitLab forge are expected to be in place and operating this summer. We remain committed to |
| communicating with our project committers and contributors before implementing any changes to |
| our operations.</p> |
| <p>As we expand our presence in Europe, we anticipate new opportunities for our global community |
| members to participate in innovative new open source projects.</p> |
| </li> |
| </ol> |
| |
| <p id="q_9"><strong>Q. What does this move mean for European stakeholders?</strong></p> |
| <ol type="A"> |
| <li> |
| <p>European policy makers and industry leaders alike recognize the need to pool their strengths |
| to achieve collectively what they could not individually, and have identified open source as a |
| key mechanism to support this via collaboration, innovation and interoperability.</p> |
| <p>Open technologies are at the center of digitalization and will play an important role in |
| driving the digital and industrial transformations called for by the European Commission in |
| its recent strategies. </p> |
| <p>To realize these ambitions and ensure the long term prosperity, Europe requires its own open |
| source foundation with an international reach and reputation. By moving our legal residence to |
| Europe, the Eclipse Foundation seeks contributions from a broad cross-section of European |
| companies and governmental organizations to open source projects.</p> |
| </li> |
| </ol> |
| |
| <p id="q_10"><strong>Q. What does this move mean for global stakeholders?</strong></p> |
| <ol type="A"> |
| <li> |
| <p>This move will provide global stakeholders more choice for their strategic open source |
| initiatives. We believe that more choice and greater diversity will be of benefit to the |
| global open source communities, and for the industries that rely upon and collaborate with |
| them. The Eclipse Foundation aspires to be a truly global institution, now with a new European |
| home. As one of the world’s largest open source foundations, the Eclipse |
| Foundation is proud to host a global community of dedicated contributors, committers, and |
| leading companies across industry sectors. </p> |
| <p>Our goal is to accelerate the growth of an already broad and expanding open ecosystem of |
| developers, organizations, and public sector entities collaborating to advance technologies |
| that are expected to have a major impact on global economies, including the cloud, edge |
| computing, artificial intelligence, connected vehicles, telecommunications, and the Internet |
| of Things.</p> |
| <p>We expect that this move will foster the growth of a global, sustainable ecosystem with a |
| competitive and level playing field that delivers broad benefits to developers and industry. |
| In this way, we see the move offering increased global collaboration opportunities for |
| organizations from all around the world.</p> |
| </li> |
| </ol> |
| <p id="q_11"><strong>Q. Does this mean you are shutting down Eclipse Foundation-USA?</strong></p> |
| |
| <ol type="A"> |
| <li> |
| <p>No, there is no current intention to shut down our USA incorporated not-for-profit organization. </p> |
| </li> |
| </ol> |
| |
| <p id="q_12"><strong>Q. Does this mean you are shutting down Eclipse Foundation Europe GmbH?</strong></p> |
| <ol type="A"> |
| <li> |
| <p>No, there is no current intention to shut down our German incorporated for-profit organization.</p> |
| </li> |
| </ol> |
| <p id="q_13"><strong>Q. Does the Eclipse Foundation have a patent policy?</strong></p> |
| <ol type="A"> |
| <li> |
| <p>Yes. Under the Eclipse Public License (EPL), each Contributor grants rights to create |
| derivative works and for worldwide, royalty-free software redistribution in accordance with |
| the EPL terms, including a royalty-free license to use Contributor’s patents as embodied |
| in its contributions. Under the Eclipse Foundation Specification Process (EFSP) used for |
| creating open industry specifications such as Jakarta EE, royalty-free patent licenses are |
| granted to all implementations of the specifications published. </p> |
| <p> |
| You can find more information about Eclipse Foundation’s patent policy <a |
| href="/legal/legalfaq.php#h.25gqlkbku1u9" |
| >here</a>. Further information about our intellectual property policy is also available <a |
| href="/org/documents/Eclipse%20IP%20Policy2006_03_20.pdf" |
| >here</a>. Additional details about the EFSP can be found <a |
| href="/projects/efsp/" |
| >here</a>. |
| </p> |
| </li> |
| </ol> |
| <p id="q_14"><strong>Q. How can I support this move to Europe?</strong></p> |
| <ol type="A"> |
| <li> |
| <p> |
| We need the support and engagement of European developers, community leaders, companies and |
| funding agencies in order to ensure a successful transition. For more information, email <a |
| href="mailto:eclipse-europe@eclipse.org" |
| >eclipse-europe@eclipse.org</a> |
| </p> |
| </li> |
| </ol> |
| |
