Today, we’re announcing that the Eclipse Foundation has successfully completed all of the necessary formalities and has formally established the Eclipse Foundation AISBL, an international non-profit association based in Brussels, Belgium.
As a European-based global organization, the Eclipse Foundation is in the ideal position to build on the growing momentum of strategic open source in Europe and on our strength in the region to support open source innovation globally.
Today’s announcement is the culmination of months of work, since we first announced our intent to establish ourselves as European in May 2020. I want to thank everyone who has had a hand in making our legal transition to Europe a reality. There have been many aspects to consider and a lot of work behind the scenes to get all of the required pieces in place. And the journey isn’t over yet! I will be publishing a second blog post shortly discussing what this means for our members and committers. Tl;dr: keep doing what you’re doing.
Building on Our Strength in Europe Advances Open Source Innovation Globally
The Eclipse Foundation is the largest open source software foundation in Europe in terms of staff, projects, developers, and members. We have more than 170 members and more than 900 committers based in Europe. And we’re already home to a number of publicly funded European research projects that enable academics, subject matter experts, and large organizations to collaborate and build on research results to benefit corporations and the public.
We see a huge opportunity to build on our strong membership base, active developer community, and strong institutional relationships in Europe to enable the free flow of open software innovation throughout the world. Everyone will benefit from more choices and greater diversity of open source software technologies to build on.
As the Eclipse Foundation continues to grow — we added 75 new members in 2020 alone — the choices, diversity, and benefits will multiply. The future of open source has never looked brighter.
Europe Has Embraced Open Source Software
The strategic value of open source software is recognized across European government organizations, corporations, and publicly funded institutions:
- The European Commission considers open source initiatives to be strategically important to drive digital and industrial transformations that will help to shape Europe’s digital future.
- Leading European corporations, including Bosch, Daimler TSS, IBM, and SAP — all founding members of the Eclipse Foundation AISBL — see open source collaboration as an important way to accelerate innovation and increase their competitive edge.
- Academic and research institutions are increasingly using open source software as a catalyst for innovation.
All of these organizations see the benefits of joining forces with each other, and with organizations around the world, to collaborate on open source software innovation. Many already see the Eclipse Foundation as the right place to foster global industry collaboration on open source projects in strategic technology areas, such as cloud, edge computing, artificial intelligence, connected vehicles, telecom, and IoT.
Get More Information
To provide more insight into our legal move to Europe and what it means for Eclipse Foundation members, we’ve developed a number of resources we think you’ll find helpful. I will also be providing an additional post tomorrow with additional details for members.
- Frequently asked questions.
- A new case study that describes the business benefits Obeo has gained as a member of the Eclipse Foundation alongside much larger companies.
- A free white paper that explains the Eclipse Foundation’s role at the center of European open source innovation: Enabling Digital Transformation in Europe Through Global Open Source Collaboration.
- A helpful overview presentation about the Eclipse Foundation AISBL.
This is a big day for the Eclipse Foundation and its community. I want to thank all of my colleagues on the staff and our Board that helped make this possible.