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Eclipse Community Continues to Deliver on Open Source Commitment

Tuesday, September 17, 2019 - 09:01 by Thabang Mashologu

Community is key. And the Eclipse Foundation’s community is on a roll.

With all the work of the various working groups, market launches, and now awards, it’s sometimes an effort just to keep up with all the activity. This month is no exception.

Last night at the Oracle Code One conference, our executive director, Mike Milinkovich, accepted the Duke’s Choice Award on behalf of the Jakarta EE community. The Eclipse Foundation’s Jakarta EE Working Group was recognized for outstanding open source contributions to the Java ecosystem.

Now in its 17th year, the Duke’s Choice Awards celebrate invaluable innovation in Java-based technologies and contributions to Java. We’re thrilled with the award for Jakarta EE because there is no greater recognition of an achievement than the recognition that comes from colleagues and industry peers. On behalf of everyone at the Eclipse Foundation, thank you and congratulations to the dedicated members of the Jakarta EE community!

Beyond the award, last night’s news comes on the heels of the community’s successful launch of Jakarta EE 8 last week and the launch today of Eclipse Che 7.

Last week, under an open, vendor-neutral process, a diverse community of the world’s leading Java organizations, hundreds of dedicated developers, and Eclipse Foundation staff delivered the Jakarta EE 8 Full Platform and Web Profiles, and related TCKs, as well as Eclipse GlassFish 5.1 certified as a Jakarta EE 8-compatible implementation. With 18 different member organizations, over 160 new committers, 43 projects, and a codebase of over 61 million lines of code in 129 Git repositories, this was truly a massive undertaking — even by the Eclipse community’s standards.

Jakarta EE 8 offers an unprecedented opportunity for Java stakeholders to participate in advancing Jakarta EE to meet the modern enterprise’s need for cloud-based applications that resolve key business challenges. The community now has an open source baseline that enables the migration of proven Java technologies to a world of containers, microservices, Kubernetes, service meshes, and other cloud native technologies that have been adopted by enterprises over the last few years. 

We also published a new eBook, Fulfilling the Vision for Open Source, Cloud Native Java. This free publication explores our community’s perspective on what cloud native Java is, why it matters so much to so many enterprises, and where Jakarta EE technologies are headed. If Java is important to your organization, download this eBook now.

While all the preparations were being put in place for the launch of Jakarta EE 8, our team was also preparing for the release of Eclipse Che 7 earlier today.

Eclipse Che 7 is the world’s first Kubernetes-native IDE that has been built from the ground up specifically to enable developers to build cloud native applications. It makes the developer and production environments the same on a scalable, collaborative, and secure platform specifically designed for building containerized applications. And it addresses the major challenges developers face when working with Kubernetes.

Che 7 is a game changer because it enables faster, safer development with Kubernetes. The platform significantly simplifies writing, building, and collaborating on cloud native applications. It drastically reduces the learning and adoption curves of Kubernetes for enterprise application developers. It closes the gap between development and production environments. Most importantly, Che 7 makes it easier for developers to deliver value to their stakeholders and their customers. 

Not to be outdone, the next quarterly simultaneous release of the Eclipse IDE is expected this Wednesday, September 18. As one of the world’s most popular desktop development environments, the Eclipse IDE is downloaded over 2 million times per month, and is the critical development environment for more than 4 million active users. Be sure to download the 2019-09 version of the IDE here. 

Of course, all this activity is the result of the direct contribution of our community. So, congratulations and thank you to our dedicated, global community of thousands of developers, leading vendors across industries, and end user organizations. Your continued commitment and participation are what make all this possible.

And stay tuned, we’ll be making a series of announcements, releasing community-generated content, and sharing updates over the next few months. 

Meanwhile, Eclipse Che 7 will be showcased alongside Jakarta EE 8, MicroProfile, and GlassFish at booth #3228 at Code One this week.