2017 Candidate:
Chris Holmes

In 2016 Eclipse took a major step forward with its revised IP policy, making it substantially easier to bring new projects into the fold. For Eclipse to continue its role as the best place for companies to collaborate we must follow that path further, updating our culture, processes, branding and infrastructure to be welcoming to the software projects that make us great. I've been inspired to see the model pioneered by the Eclipse IDE expand out even more, to location, science, internet of things, embedded systems and automotive domains. I believe we must continue to be a more welcoming tent to expand further and to continue to play the leading role in the commercially-oriented open source world.

When I was originally elected to the board my first priority was to represent LocationTech, but this last year I've learned even more about the broader Eclipse world, and my aim is to help represent all the different parts. My vision for Eclipse has remained the same: to be the preeminent foundation for companies to collaborate together on software. In the short term this means strengthening the existing Eclipse Working Groups, and making clear to the world that Eclipse is more than a Java IDE. This does not mean we should decrease investment in the core Eclipse Platform, as it is critical that it remains our foremost example of successful collaboration. But it does mean making our messaging even more clear about what Eclipse is and promoting all our projects.

My background is all open source software - first coding and building a community around an Java-based online mapping server, then figuring out a consultancy business model to sustain core developers. We then successfully transitioned it to a product company, selling enterprise packages of our fully open source stack. Having seen so many different phases of the company lifecycle I believe I can represent the sustaining members well, and I’ve served in similar board roles in geospatial foundations, including the Open Geospatial Consortium and Global Spatial Data Infrastructure. But I believe the background that can best serve Eclipse is my background in product management, strategy and open source business.

If re-elected as a sustaining member representative my priorities will be:

• Continue to work to make the Eclipse Foundation more welcoming to new projects. The updated IP policy was a major step forward, but I believe the core policy is just the first step. We must continue to educate the open source world that things are changing, and that Eclipse actively wants to bring in more projects. Past a branding and positioning effort, we must continue to iterate on the process and cultural improvements to truly be more welcoming. We may even need to update the business model in certain areas. In particular we must give the Working Groups freedom to innovate on the model, as the motivations for contribution and participation is different between Science, Location, Internet of Things and other new groups.
• Push for more coherent architectures in the Working Groups. This draws on my product background, and I believe that Eclipse should not just present a grab bag of projects, but a vision of how the pieces work together. The core IDE and Platform have always had a coherent ecosystem, and I believe we must push LocationTech, IoT and others towards an architecture that makes sense as more than a number of projects lumped together in one domain.
• Understand and represent the needs of Sustaining Member companies at the board level. Though the companies with the largest budgets can easily contribute monetarily, I believe the intangible contributions of time, ideas and code are even more vital to the continued success of the community. Sustaining member companies are the lifeblood of Eclipse, and I hope to represent any concerns of the group as my own and represent at the board level.
• Support LocationTech to become the premier collaboration place for geospatial software. I will do this by helping push and celebrate graduation from incubation for projects and leveraging contacts to contribute their best projects and become members. This year I will also aim to help the other working groups more, and to help collaborations across different working groups.
• Focus on core improvements to the Java IDE - further improving usability, integrations, performance, and general utility to a mainstream user. The thing everyone still thinks of as ‘Eclipse’ needs to be strong, and work well for the mainstream user.

Chris Holmes started his career as lead developer of GeoServer and then founded OpenGeo (operating now as Boundless), providing commercial support for a suite of open source geospatial software projects. He currently works at Planet, a startup that builds and operates the largest constellation of earth imaging satellites, with over 130 successfully launched to date. At Planet Chris serves as Senior Vice President of Product Architecture, where he sits at the nexus of technology and business, articulating the core product strategy. He also sits on the boards of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and Brave New Software, and serves as an advisor to Carto. Chris previously was a Fulbright Scholar in Zambia, served on the board of the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association and was a founding board member of the Open Source Geospatial Consortium