The Eclipse Foundation is joining forces with IBM and other leading organizations in the Call for Code initiative to promote the development of open source solutions to mitigate the effects of natural disasters. The Foundation is proud to support tackling one of the world’s greatest challenges through the creation of sustainable technology that helps people. We encourage the Eclipse community to contribute their considerable talents to this worthy cause!
Solving a Problem of Global Proportions
The Call for Code Global Challenge was originally created by David Clark Cause, a company that brings diverse stakeholders together to participate in purpose-driven initiatives around the world. Call for Code is powered by IBM and draws support from over 35 organizations, including United Nations Human Rights and the American Red Cross. The initiative asks developers to create solutions that significantly improve preparedness for severe weather events, help to safeguard public health and well-being, and help people recover from natural disasters.
Here are just a few sobering statistics on the global impact of natural disasters (courtesy of Call for Code):
- Since 2000, natural disasters have directly affected 2.5 billion people. Over 1 million people have died as a result of natural disasters in that period of time.
- Severe weather events are responsible for $1.5 trillion of economic impact since 2003.
- Over the last 30 years, flooding is up over 240%.
A Role for the Eclipse Community
Open source is about giving back.
Many of us within the Eclipse community believe that technology innovation is a force for good in the world. Our global community has a demonstrated track record of practical problem solving by developing sustainable open technologies. IBM is both a Strategic member of the Eclipse Foundation and a co-founder of Call for Code, so when they asked us to help rally developers to alleviate human suffering through lasting and scalable open source, we immediately committed our support to this remarkable effort.
In addition to the Eclipse Foundation’s own commitment to this cause, we are calling on our broad community of developers to participate as well. There are many ways to participate -- leverage our existing projects in creating specific applications (such as the Eclipse IoT stacks and many others), contribute new code that addresses a specific need, develop test cases, testbeds, examples, etc. Every contribution helps.
We hope the inaugural Call for Code Challenge is just the start of an ongoing commitment by software developers to have a major, positive impact on our world. 22 million developers around the world can truly make a difference, and we’re glad to be a part of this amazing movement.
Please join us and answer the call! To get involved and start building today, visit CallforCode.org.
