2025 Annual Eclipse Foundation

Community Report

Open Regulatory Compliance

In September 2024, the Open Regulatory Compliance Working Group (ORC WG) was launched to help the open source ecosystem proactively address the rising complexity of global software regulations, including the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). What began as a strategic response to the CRA has grown into one of the most collaborative and impactful initiatives in our community. The ORC WG brings together developers, enterprises, industry leaders, and over 20 open source foundations, in a shared effort to keep open source secure, compliant, and sustainable.

Through this unprecedented level of cooperation, the ORC WG is establishing critical guidance, building tools, and helping shape practical approaches to compliance that reflect how open source is actually developed. As governments and regulators push for more accountability and transparency in software, the work being done within the ORC WG is not only timely, it’s essential.

Supply Chain Security

The Eclipse Foundation is committed to leading by example in advancing open source security best practices. Over the past year, we strengthened our security posture through the rollout of a unified vulnerability management system across all projects, expanded two-factor authentication for committers on GitHub and GitLab, and completed in-depth security audits for three Eclipse projects. These milestones, supported in part by funding from the OpenSSF Alpha-Omega initiative, underscore our commitment to building a secure and resilient open source ecosystem and helping our community stay ahead of evolving software supply chain risks.

Automotive & Mobility

Eclipse Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) is gaining real traction, with 63 members on board as of 31 March, 2025, and growing. Our quarterly community days continue to highlight exciting progress, especially as more projects come together to form a powerful ecosystem. That energy was on full display at the 2024 SDV Hackathon in Karlsruhe, where participants leveraged SDV Blueprints and various other combinations of Eclipse SDV projects to create both playful and real-world use cases.

Projects like Eclipse S-CORE (Safe Open Vehicle Core), the Eclipse Trustable Software Framework (TSF), and Eclipse SDV-LVL reflect the community's dedication to collaboratively solving shared challenges. Together, we’re working on developing a unified architecture and software stack, advancing functional safety, and defining a common terminology and taxonomy for the SDV space.

To support the growing collaboration, we also launched three new Special Interest Groups (SIGs), giving members more ways to connect, explore emerging tech, and shape the future of software-defined vehicles together.

Enterprise Java

Eclipse IDE

Fuelled by renewed investment and interest from a broad range of stakeholders and organisations, the Eclipse IDE Working Group continues to support quarterly releases. The group is focused on maintaining a stable, backward-compatible platform for long-term use in IDEs and RCP-based applications. In parallel, it is driving modernisation efforts, upgrading to the latest Java versions and developing a streamlined, cross-platform Standard Widget Tool User Interface (SWT UI) to reduce maintenance overhead and ensure long-term viability.

Next-Gen Tools

Eclipse Theia continues to lead as a modern, extensible platform for building next-generation development environments. A major milestone in its evolution was the launch of Theia AI, a fully open and extensible framework that brings artificial intelligence into developer tools on the developer’s terms. Built on the Theia platform, it enables organisations to embed domain-specific, LLM-powered capabilities into custom toolchains or directly into Theia IDE, all while maintaining full control over data, workflows, and architecture. As a cornerstone of both the Eclipse Cloud DevTools Working Group and the Eclipse Foundation’s broader commitment to open, vendor-neutral AI, Theia AI drives innovation, enhances productivity, and reinforces our mission to deliver transparent, developer-first tooling for the AI era.

RISC-V Cores

Originally founded in 2019 as a not-for-profit focused on developing open source hardware, the OpenHW Group officially became the OpenHW Foundation under the Eclipse Foundation umbrella in late 2024. This strategic transition brings together OpenHW's mission to make high-quality, industrial-grade open source RISC-V processor cores accessible to the global community with the Eclipse Foundation's proven governance, infrastructure, and ecosystem support. By combining forces, the OpenHW Foundation is now better positioned to deliver on the promise of open hardware innovation, providing the stability, neutrality, and collaboration framework needed to accelerate RISC-V adoption across industries ranging from automotive and aerospace to industrial and IoT.

Embedded Real-Time Systems

In October we launched the ThreadX Alliance to ensure the long-term sustainability and growth of Eclipse ThreadX, the world's first open source, safety-certified real-time operating system (RTOS). This new initiative brings together industry leaders, developers, and ecosystem partners to collaborate on advancing the project, expanding its reach, and supporting its adoption in safety-critical applications. By providing a dedicated forum for community-driven technical collaboration, ecosystem development, and strategic guidance, the Alliance is helping to drive innovation and reliability across the embedded and real-time systems landscape.

Artificial Intelligence

We're seeing real momentum around open source AI at the Eclipse Foundation, with projects like Eclipse LMOS, Eclipse Theia AI, Eclipse AIDGE, and Eclipse Graphene already helping to shape a growing ecosystem. As AI continues to transform how software is built and used, we’re focused on providing the trusted governance and infrastructure our community needs to build open, transparent, and secure technologies. Being based in Europe also gives us a unique role in supporting digital sovereignty and aligning with regional policy priorities. It’s still early days, but this is a pivotal moment to help shape the future of AI in the open, and we’re excited about what’s coming next.

Digital Sovereignty

The Eclipse Foundation continues to take a leadership role in advancing digital sovereignty through open source. The Eclipse Dataspace Working Group (EDWG) is accelerating the development of trusted, interoperable data-sharing ecosystems aligned with Europe’s privacy, security, and sovereignty objectives. With participation from more than 20 member organisations, EDWG is collaboratively developing open specifications and software components to support federated data exchange, technical standardisation, and regulatory alignment. As the largest open source foundation based in Europe, we provide the legal framework, governance, and infrastructure needed to help public and private sector stakeholders retain control over their digital infrastructure while driving responsible innovation.

Strategic Research

Strategic Research: Research at the Eclipse Foundation made impressive progress in 2024, advancing active projects while securing participation in five new initiatives spanning some of today’s most strategic technology domains. These newly awarded projects reflect our growing reputation as a trusted partner in applied open source research:

• RIGOLETTO is developing a RISC-V-based automotive hardware platform to accelerate the shift to software-defined, autonomous, and electrified vehicles.
• O-CEI is advancing Cloud-Edge-IoT adoption in Europe through improved data sharing, energy efficiency, and open standards.
• MOSAICO aims to enhance AI-powered coding assistants by enabling multi-agent collaboration to increase accuracy and reduce bias.
• HAL4SDV is laying the groundwork for a standardised hardware abstraction layer to support scalable, data-driven vehicle architectures.
• OCCTET is building an open source compliance toolkit to help SMEs align with emerging cybersecurity regulations.

Building on the momentum of last year’s 31 submissions, we’re still awaiting outcomes on 13 proposals. Meanwhile, 2025 is already off to a strong start, with invitations to join 17 new research projects and growing.

Global Events

Events remain at the heart of how we connect, grow, and celebrate our vibrant open source ecosystem. From virtual webinars to major global conferences, we create spaces where developers, businesses, and stakeholders can share insights, collaborate on emerging technologies, and build lasting relationships. A standout 2024 highlight was the launch of our flagship in-person event, Open Community Experience, which brought together participants from across our “community of communities” for three days of learning, networking, and collaboration. With OCX 2026 already on the calendar for next April, excitement is building for what’s ahead. Throughout the year, we host and support a diverse lineup of community events, from developer-focused virtual events like JakartaOne Livestream and TheiaCon, to specialised in-person gatherings such as the Automotive Open Source Summit. We also proudly sponsor and participate in leading industry conferences around the globe, ensuring Eclipse projects gain visibility across the broader technology ecosystem.

Good Governance

We continue to play a key role in advancing good open source governance through our active contributions to the OSPO Alliance. In addition to GitLab, we now offer an automated deployment of the Good Governance Initiative on GitHub, making it easier for organisations to adopt best practices. We also lead regular OSPO OnRamp sessions to help newcomers navigate the world of open source, and showcase real-world experiences through the growing OSPO Stories series, amplifying lessons learned and community impact.