elections/2024/mader.xml - www.eclipse.org/org - Git at Google

 <!-- id is the same as the file name without the extension
      type is one of "committer" or "add-in-provider" -->
 <boardmember id="mader" type="committer">

 	<name>Thomas Mäder</name>

 	<title>CEO, Castle Ridge Software</title>

 	<!-- Name of the file containing the image of the candidate; location relative to this file.  -->
 	<image>mader.jpg</image>

 	<!-- eMail address will be modified before it is included on a webpage so that robots will not harvest it. -->
 	<email>t.s.maeder@gmail.com</email>

 	<phone></phone>

 	<!-- How do we contact you? e.g. postal address -->
 	<contact></contact>

 	<!-- What do you do with eclipse? -->
   <eclipse_affiliation>
     <![CDATA[
       <p>
         I was part of the Eclipse project team before the Eclipse Foundation was
         even formed. I currently serve as a project lead and active committer on
         the Theia project. I retain committer status on the jdt,
         <a href="https://jdt.ls/">jdt.ls</a> and Che
         projects.
       </p>
     ]]>
   </eclipse_affiliation>

 	<!-- Feel free to include html tags and what-not between the CDATA tags. -->
 	<vision>
 		<![CDATA[
       <p>
         What sets apart the Eclipse Foundation from other Open Source
         organisations is the focus on governance vs. pure licensing and project
         hosting. The rules of the Foundation allow organisations to cooperate on
         a level playing field. This is ideal for the development of ecosystems
         where you want to prevent a single player extracting more than their
         fair share of the value created by the community. The Foundation should
         continue to focus on this role, but be more active in shaping the Open
         Source landscape.
       </p>
       <p>
         As a committer member representative my role would be to look after the
         interests of the individuals doing the work, not their employers. That
         would mean, for example, that the individual contributions of a
         committer are recognized over their career independent of the employer.
         Also, I would advocate for making the experience of working in an
         Eclipse project is as pleasant as possible while preserving the IP
         discipline the Eclipse Foundation is known for. Since I am not employed
         by a large Eclipse member company, I can be the voice of the committers
         without competing interests in mind.
       </p>
       <p>
         On a more general level, You might say that Open Source software has
         won: I cannot think of a widely used software product that is not built
         upon Open Source code. But the Free and Open Source world is facing
         three main challenges going forward:
       </p>
       <ol>
         <li class="margin-bottom-30">
           Regulation
           <p>
             Policy-makers have grown concerned with the power platform
             companies like Google, Meta, Twitter, Apple or even Uber have
             amassed
             over our lives. They are impinging on our basic rights like privacy.
             They wield huge influence over the information we consume,
             influencing our democratic process. They have enormous economic
             power, resulting in favourable tax deals and legislation.
           </p>
           <p>
             Politicians, especially the EU, are starting to curb the influence
             of platform capitalists by creating regulations like the GDPR, the
             Cyber Resilience ACT (CRA) and the Common Services (CSA) and Markets
             (CMA) acts. You can be sure that the large old and new heavyweights
             of the industry have their lobbyists working the floor in Brussels,
             Washington and even Beijing. But what about the rest of us? We need
             to make sure that the regulations being created work for the larger
             software industry and not just for the big five. To achieve this, we
             need a voice that can articulate our needs and formulate policy that
             works for the Open Source community.
           </p>
           <p>
             The Eclipse Foundation could be that voice.
           </p>
         </li>
         <li class="margin-bottom-30">
           AI
           <p>
             We all probably have had some experience with large language models
             (LLM) like the ones used in GitHub Copilot by now. And if you work
             on Open Source some of the code you have written has been used to
             create that model. This raises a bunch of legal and moral questions:
             are the weights in the Copilot model a derivative work of the code
             that was used to compute them? If the code was GPL, must the weights
             be GPL as well? Is it fair that Microsoft charges 10 dollars a month
             for something created from your code?
           </p>
           <p>
             In the long run, even if coding assistants like Copilot become
             available on acceptable terms, we need to think about this: where
             will the training data for the next generation LLM's come from?
             LLM's may be uncannily good at generating reasonable code, but they
             are not creative: they cannot produce code without having seen large
             amounts of example solutions for a particular problem. Even in an AI
             world, we will need to have programmers who create new and
             innovative solutions that the LLM's can copy. The humans creating
             those innovations will have to be fairly compensated for the value
             they create, or the AI economy will have engineered its own demise.
           </p>
           <p>
             The Eclipse Foundation should speak out clearly on behalf of
             software innovators and advocate for their just compensation.
           </p>
         </li>
         <li class="margin-bottom-30">
           "Source available"
           <p>
             The last twenty years have been a period of "free money" that
             resulted in the easy availability of large scale financing to many
             start-up companies. A good part of that capital was invested into
             making software. As the investors were more interested in
             hyper-growth than in profitability, a lot of the software was
             released under an Open Source (OS) license. But even though the
             software was released under an OS license, the code was controlled
             and owned by a single company in many cases.
           </p>
           <p>
             Now the investment money is drying up and companies are pressured to
             increase profitability. One way to do so is to monetize the OS
             software these companies control. You can increase cash flow by
             steering the community to paid-for services using "open core"
             licensing while charging for the "enterprise" parts of the software.
             A second way to generate money is by keeping the competition from
             offering similar services. This is usually done by including "field
             of use" restrictions in the software license. For example, a vendor
             offering a web service might include a clause that prohibits the use
             of the software to offer a similar service. There is nothing wrong
             with that. A company can license the software it created any way it
             wants. So why is this a problem?
           </p>
           <p>
             If you have a large Open Source project like Eclipse Theia, you
             probably rely on thousands of libraries. Most of them are no direct
             dependencies, but are required by some third party library you use.
             The "field of use" restrictions in "source available" licenses are
             usually "viral" in that they infect any derivative of the library.
           </p>
           <p>
             The Open Source software ecosystem is hyper-productive because we
             all stand on the shoulders of giants. Because everyone is using the
             work of others, we can produce amazing works that would have been
             impossible before. "Source available" licenses destroy this
             productivity: we have a hard enough time making sure that our
             dependencies are properly licensed. We can do it because there is
             only a handful of open source licenses, many very similar. Tracking
             arbitrary use restrictions for thousands of packages is simply not
             feasible.
           </p>
           <p>
             So if "source available" becomes widely adopted, the Open Source
             ecosystem will eventually collapse. People will not be willing to
             contribute to the commons if others are not willing to do the same.
           </p>
           <p>
             The Eclipse Foundation should make clear that "source available"
             software is not Open Source and must not be used in Open Source
             projects. The Foundation should publicly advocate against "source
             available" licenses and educate the community about there harmful
             effects on the industry.
           </p>
         </li>
       </ol>
 		]]>
 	</vision>

 	<!-- Tell us a little bit about yourself. -->
 	<bio>
     <![CDATA[
       <p>
         I hail from a small town in Switzerland and studied computer science at
         ETH Zürich. I had the good fortune to get hired into the team around
         Erich Gamma that built the first Eclipse IDE and later I worked on the
         IBM Java VM. After doing stints in business software, I returned to
         developer tools to work on Eclipse Che for Red Hat. I've been working on
         Eclipse Theia now for a couple of years and I very much enjoy working in
         that community.
       </p>
       <p>
         I left Red Hat a couple of years ago to run my own small software
         consultancy, Castle Ridge Software. I do sponsored development for Theia
         and consult on interacting with open source communities.
       </p>
     ]]>
 	</bio>

 	<!-- Who do you work for? -->
 	<affiliation>Castle Ridge Software</affiliation>
 </boardmember>
	<!-- id is the same as the file name without the extension
	type is one of "committer" or "add-in-provider" -->
	<boardmember id="mader" type="committer">

	<name>Thomas Mäder</name>

	<title>CEO, Castle Ridge Software</title>

	<!-- Name of the file containing the image of the candidate; location relative to this file. -->
	<image>mader.jpg</image>

	<!-- eMail address will be modified before it is included on a webpage so that robots will not harvest it. -->
	<email>t.s.maeder@gmail.com</email>

	<phone></phone>

	<!-- How do we contact you? e.g. postal address -->
	<contact></contact>

	<!-- What do you do with eclipse? -->
	<eclipse_affiliation>
	<![CDATA[
	<p>
	I was part of the Eclipse project team before the Eclipse Foundation was
	even formed. I currently serve as a project lead and active committer on
	the Theia project. I retain committer status on the jdt,
	<a href="https://jdt.ls/">jdt.ls</a> and Che
	projects.
	</p>
	]]>
	</eclipse_affiliation>

	<!-- Feel free to include html tags and what-not between the CDATA tags. -->
	<vision>
	<![CDATA[
	<p>
	What sets apart the Eclipse Foundation from other Open Source
	organisations is the focus on governance vs. pure licensing and project
	hosting. The rules of the Foundation allow organisations to cooperate on
	a level playing field. This is ideal for the development of ecosystems
	where you want to prevent a single player extracting more than their
	fair share of the value created by the community. The Foundation should
	continue to focus on this role, but be more active in shaping the Open
	Source landscape.
	</p>
	<p>
	As a committer member representative my role would be to look after the
	interests of the individuals doing the work, not their employers. That
	would mean, for example, that the individual contributions of a
	committer are recognized over their career independent of the employer.
	Also, I would advocate for making the experience of working in an
	Eclipse project is as pleasant as possible while preserving the IP
	discipline the Eclipse Foundation is known for. Since I am not employed
	by a large Eclipse member company, I can be the voice of the committers
	without competing interests in mind.
	</p>
	<p>
	On a more general level, You might say that Open Source software has
	won: I cannot think of a widely used software product that is not built
	upon Open Source code. But the Free and Open Source world is facing
	three main challenges going forward:
	</p>
	<ol>
	<li class="margin-bottom-30">
	Regulation
	<p>
	Policy-makers have grown concerned with the power platform
	companies like Google, Meta, Twitter, Apple or even Uber have
	amassed
	over our lives. They are impinging on our basic rights like privacy.
	They wield huge influence over the information we consume,
	influencing our democratic process. They have enormous economic
	power, resulting in favourable tax deals and legislation.
	</p>
	<p>
	Politicians, especially the EU, are starting to curb the influence
	of platform capitalists by creating regulations like the GDPR, the
	Cyber Resilience ACT (CRA) and the Common Services (CSA) and Markets
	(CMA) acts. You can be sure that the large old and new heavyweights
	of the industry have their lobbyists working the floor in Brussels,
	Washington and even Beijing. But what about the rest of us? We need
	to make sure that the regulations being created work for the larger
	software industry and not just for the big five. To achieve this, we
	need a voice that can articulate our needs and formulate policy that
	works for the Open Source community.
	</p>
	<p>
	The Eclipse Foundation could be that voice.
	</p>
	</li>
	<li class="margin-bottom-30">
	AI
	<p>
	We all probably have had some experience with large language models
	(LLM) like the ones used in GitHub Copilot by now. And if you work
	on Open Source some of the code you have written has been used to
	create that model. This raises a bunch of legal and moral questions:
	are the weights in the Copilot model a derivative work of the code
	that was used to compute them? If the code was GPL, must the weights
	be GPL as well? Is it fair that Microsoft charges 10 dollars a month
	for something created from your code?
	</p>
	<p>
	In the long run, even if coding assistants like Copilot become
	available on acceptable terms, we need to think about this: where
	will the training data for the next generation LLM's come from?
	LLM's may be uncannily good at generating reasonable code, but they
	are not creative: they cannot produce code without having seen large
	amounts of example solutions for a particular problem. Even in an AI
	world, we will need to have programmers who create new and
	innovative solutions that the LLM's can copy. The humans creating
	those innovations will have to be fairly compensated for the value
	they create, or the AI economy will have engineered its own demise.
	</p>
	<p>
	The Eclipse Foundation should speak out clearly on behalf of
	software innovators and advocate for their just compensation.
	</p>
	</li>
	<li class="margin-bottom-30">
	"Source available"
	<p>
	The last twenty years have been a period of "free money" that
	resulted in the easy availability of large scale financing to many
	start-up companies. A good part of that capital was invested into
	making software. As the investors were more interested in
	hyper-growth than in profitability, a lot of the software was
	released under an Open Source (OS) license. But even though the
	software was released under an OS license, the code was controlled
	and owned by a single company in many cases.
	</p>
	<p>
	Now the investment money is drying up and companies are pressured to
	increase profitability. One way to do so is to monetize the OS
	software these companies control. You can increase cash flow by
	steering the community to paid-for services using "open core"
	licensing while charging for the "enterprise" parts of the software.
	A second way to generate money is by keeping the competition from
	offering similar services. This is usually done by including "field
	of use" restrictions in the software license. For example, a vendor
	offering a web service might include a clause that prohibits the use
	of the software to offer a similar service. There is nothing wrong
	with that. A company can license the software it created any way it
	wants. So why is this a problem?
	</p>
	<p>
	If you have a large Open Source project like Eclipse Theia, you
	probably rely on thousands of libraries. Most of them are no direct
	dependencies, but are required by some third party library you use.
	The "field of use" restrictions in "source available" licenses are
	usually "viral" in that they infect any derivative of the library.
	</p>
	<p>
	The Open Source software ecosystem is hyper-productive because we
	all stand on the shoulders of giants. Because everyone is using the
	work of others, we can produce amazing works that would have been
	impossible before. "Source available" licenses destroy this
	productivity: we have a hard enough time making sure that our
	dependencies are properly licensed. We can do it because there is
	only a handful of open source licenses, many very similar. Tracking
	arbitrary use restrictions for thousands of packages is simply not
	feasible.
	</p>
	<p>
	So if "source available" becomes widely adopted, the Open Source
	ecosystem will eventually collapse. People will not be willing to
	contribute to the commons if others are not willing to do the same.
	</p>
	<p>
	The Eclipse Foundation should make clear that "source available"
	software is not Open Source and must not be used in Open Source
	projects. The Foundation should publicly advocate against "source
	available" licenses and educate the community about there harmful
	effects on the industry.
	</p>
	</li>
	</ol>
	]]>
	</vision>

	<!-- Tell us a little bit about yourself. -->
	<bio>
	<![CDATA[
	<p>
	I hail from a small town in Switzerland and studied computer science at
	ETH Zürich. I had the good fortune to get hired into the team around
	Erich Gamma that built the first Eclipse IDE and later I worked on the
	IBM Java VM. After doing stints in business software, I returned to
	developer tools to work on Eclipse Che for Red Hat. I've been working on
	Eclipse Theia now for a couple of years and I very much enjoy working in
	that community.
	</p>
	<p>
	I left Red Hat a couple of years ago to run my own small software
	consultancy, Castle Ridge Software. I do sponsored development for Theia
	and consult on interacting with open source communities.
	</p>
	]]>
	</bio>

	<!-- Who do you work for? -->
	<affiliation>Castle Ridge Software</affiliation>
	</boardmember>