Eclipse Forms Independent Organization

Membership Launches Not-For-Profit Corporation to Implement and Share Technology
Establishes Scalable Governance Model for Open Source Projects and Commercial Participation

ECLIPSECON, ANAHEIM, CA—February 2, 2004—The Eclipse Board of Stewards today announced Eclipse’s reorganization into a not-for-profit corporation. Originally a consortium that formed when IBM released the Eclipse Platform into Open Source, Eclipse is now an independent body that will drive the platform’s evolution to benefit the providers of software development offerings and end-users. All technology and source code provided to this fast-growing ecosystem will remain openly available and royalty-free.

With this change, a full-time Eclipse management organization is being established to engage with commercial developers and consumers, academic and research institutions, standards bodies, tool interoperability groups and individual developers, plus coordinate Open Source projects. To maintain a reliable and accessible development roadmap, a set of councils–Requirements, Architecture and Planning–will guide the development done by Eclipse Open Source projects. With the support of over 50 member companies, Eclipse already hosts 4 major Open Source projects that include 19 subprojects.

To oversee and staff this new management organization, Eclipse has established a Board of Directors drawn from four classes of membership: Strategic Developers, Strategic Consumers, Add-in Providers and Open Source project leaders. Strategic

Developers and Strategic Consumers hold seats on this Board, as do representatives elected by Add-in Providers and Open Source project leaders. Strategic Developers, Strategic Consumers and Add-in Providers contribute annual dues. The founding Strategic Developers and Strategic Consumers are Ericsson, HP, IBM, Intel, MontaVista Software, QNX, SAP and Serena Software. In the coming weeks, the Board will announce its selection of a full-time Executive Director to lead the Eclipse management organization.

"As mainstream IS organizations begin implementing and deploying service-oriented architectures like J2EE and .NET into new computing environments, having standardized, integrated and interoperable technologies will become increasingly important to their success. Industry consortiums like Eclipse and NetBeans that implement tools based upon standards from groups like the Object Management Group (OMG) and Java Tools Community (JTC) are well-suited to address these types of problems–especially if the groups can coordinate their efforts." says Gartner vice-president and research director, Michael Blechar.

According to Skip McGaughey, spokesperson for Eclipse, “This is a significant step forward in the evolution of Eclipse. For the Open Source development community, we’re establishing a strong support base that will strengthen the projects and expand a powerful reusable architecture. This creates long-term opportunities for reuse, interoperation and innovation that enable both providers and consumers to take development tool technology to the next level in functionality integration and usability.”

With more than 18 million download requests recorded since its inception, adoption of the Eclipse platform continues to accelerate. Development environment providers value its powerful reusable architecture that provides integration “by construction,” reduces duplication of effort and creates new opportunities for innovation and differentiation. Add-in providers are attracted by the ease with which seamless integration can be achieved as well as the large business opportunity represented by this growing ecosystem. End users appreciate the common look-and-feel and off-the-shelf integration across a large selection of independently developed offerings. With reorganization, Eclipse’s members have established the strategic, operational and financial means to effectively support and accommodate continued growth.

Strategic Partner Quotes

Hewlett Packard (HP)
"As an independent, not-for-profit corporation, Eclipse will provide a superior environment for tool integration and interoperability and will continue to cultivate a vibrant community of tool providers and users," said Mike Rank, director of developer resources and partner enablement for HP. "HP is proud to serve on the Eclipse board of directors and provide its experience and expertise in both using and extending the Eclipse technology. As a strategic member of the Eclipse organization, HP is committed to providing developers with the tools needed to incorporate and leverage application management capabilities over the entire software development lifecycle."

IBM
"IBM, a leader and champion of the Eclipse movement, is committed to continuing our significant investment to improve the Eclipse platform, frameworks and related tools," said Lee R. Nackman, IBM vice president of desktop development tools and chief technical officer of Rational software." To deliver on the promise of Eclipse, accommodate future growth, and further enhance the value of this technology to the open community, IBM is proud now to help launch Eclipse as an independent not-for-profit organization."

Intel
"Intel is pleased to be a founding member of the new independent Eclipse,” said Jonathan Khazam, general manager of Intel's Software Products Division and member of the new Eclipse Board of Directors. "We are committed to playing an active role in the new organization and believe Eclipse will enhance our Linux development tool product offerings. Intel’s deep knowledge of processor architecture and tools technology will enable us to participate in enhancing Eclipse for the next generation of development tools."

MontaVista
"The rapid and broad adoption of Eclipse technology leverages the immense resources of the Open Source community, as does Linux, for the benefit of software developers worldwide," commented Jim Ready, chief executive officer and president of MontaVista Software. "MontaVista Software has adopted Eclipse as the strategic development framework, benefiting our customers, and proudly demonstrates our commitment to Eclipse through our membership in the new independent entity, and with our contributions to Eclipse technology.”

QNX Software Systems
"QNX is proud to be a driving force behind Eclipse since its inception," said Dan Dodge, chief executive officer of QNX Software Systems Ltd. "With a seat on the board as a strategic developer member, we are reinforcing and extending our commitment to the goals of seamless tool integration and advancement of best-in-class tooling for embedded software development."

SAP
"As a founding member of the new independent entity and an early adopter of Eclipse technology in our SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio, we are pleased to serve on the newly formed Eclipse Board of Directors," said Michael Bechauf, vice president NetWeaver Standards. "SAP has taken a very active role in promoting the Eclipse open source tools platform and we look forward to contributing to its continued success. Participation in the earliest development phases of Eclipse has allowed our customers to leverage the Eclipse ecosystem. The momentum Eclipse has gained will help our customers and partners benefit from a more rapid development of the platform with increased support from a more diverse ecosystem."

Serena Software:
"We are excited to participate in the new Eclipse as a strategic consumer,” said Boris Kapitanski, vice president of Strategic Technology at Serena Software. “Eclipse is becoming a very attractive platform for a variety of companies, due mostly to its highly integrated nature. Our goal is to make Eclipse even more usable and robust by extending its capabilities from a development platform to a complete application lifecycle support environment to attract more business, marketing, and technical users to the Eclipse community."

Announced Eclipse Add-in Providers

Advanced Systems Concepts
Borland
Candle Corporation
CanyonBlue
Catalyst Systems Corporation
CollabNet
Embarcadero Technologies
ETRI
Exadel
Fujitsu
Genuitec
Hitachi Software
ILOG
INNOOPRACT
Instantiations, Inc.
Logic Library
M7 Corporation
Metanology Corporation
Micro Focus
MKS
Novell
Optena Corporation
Oracle
PalmSource
Parasoft Corporation
QA Systems
Red Hat
SAS
Scapa Technologies Limited
SilverMark
SlickEdit
Teamstudio
Telelogic
Tensilica
TimeSys
Unisys
VA Software, Inc.
Wasabi Systems
webMethods
Wind River

About Eclipse

Eclipse has formed an independent open eco-system around royalty-free technology and a universal platform for tools integration. Eclipse based tools give developers freedom of choice in a multi-language, multi-platform, multi-vendor environment. Eclipse provides a plug-in based framework that makes it easier to create, integrate and utilize software tools, saving time and money. By collaborating and exploiting core integration technology, tool producers can leverage platform reuse and concentrate on core competencies to create new development technology. The Eclipse Platform is written in the Java language and comes with extensive plug-in construction toolkits and examples. It has already been deployed on a range of development workstations including Linux, QNX, OSx and Windows based systems. A full description of the Eclipse community and white papers documenting the design and use of the Eclipse Platform are available at http://www.eclipse.org.

Media contact

Barbara Patterson
Patterson and Associates
480-488-6909
barbara@patterson.com

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