Over the past few years at the Eclipse Foundation, I have gotten to know the community through numerous projects and events. The more people I meet, the more it reinforces my belief that our values are a big part of what makes the foundation special.
Our community consists of members from all over the world, working in industries ranging from energy to automotive, enterprise software to manufacturing, and beyond. It’s amazing to see how a commitment to the open source way has brought together such a diverse group of organisations and individuals.
Leading into the Eclipse Foundation’s twentieth anniversary, we’ve done some reflecting on what has helped our organisation continue to grow over the last two decades. A few of our values stand out: Community, Transparency, Respect, Innovation.
At EclipseCon 2023, we introduced attendees to the idea that these values are in the Eclipse Foundation’s code, and even took some time to ask our community members what these values mean to them.
We heard that community is all about collaboration. People from different companies come together to work on shared projects and help fellow collaborators achieve shared goals by having everyone contribute.
When it comes to innovation, exploring ideas, overcoming organisational silos and building the future all came up as answers. The answers we received also made it clear that the community can play a big part in this.
We heard that transparency is about working in the open, working honestly, and allowing others to participate. It can be as simple as a pull request on an open source repository.
In regards to respect, we know that it is an integral part of working with people from all walks of life with different backgrounds. In the open source community, we’ve been fortunate to see lots of respect and professionalism in how our community interacts with each other.
Our values have not only helped us become a stronger community over the last two decades, but I strongly believe they will be essential to how we continue to evolve in the future. Throughout 2024 we’ll be recognising some of the big moments from our history, and sharing the perspectives of some of our members as they reflect on the foundation’s first twenty years and what they are looking forward to in the next two decades.
We’re excited to celebrate this milestone with all of you.
