Eclipse Foundation Enables Long-Term Industrial Use of Eclipse
Ottawa, Canada – February 20, 2013 – The Eclipse Foundation has launched a new initiative to enable the infrastructure and ecosystem for the support of Eclipse in industries that require Eclipse releases maintained over a very long time. Industries such as aerospace, automotive, and enterprise software are expected to support their software stack for 10 to 50 years. The new Eclipse Long Term Support (LTS) initiative will allow these companies to release bug fixes and maintenance releases of previous versions of Eclipse technologies.
The Eclipse Long Term Support initiative is led by CA Technologies, IBM, EclipseSource and SAP AG. The Eclipse Foundation, through Eclipse LTS, will provide the IT infrastructure to fix, build, sign and deploy updates for older versions of Eclipse. LTS will also enable an ecosystem of service providers, technology providers and large enterprise consumers of Eclipse to share fixes and releases. The initiative is open to any organization with an interest in long-term support and maintenance for Eclipse technology.
"This is an important next step for the Eclipse Foundation to enable the adoption of Eclipse and open source software in important industries," said Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director, Eclipse Foundation. "LTS is going to solve some very important challenges for organizations that rely upon open source for critical applications. This is a great example of how the Eclipse Foundation is extending the services we offer to make it possible for companies to adopt Eclipse and open source software."
"Long-term support is an essential part of SAP’s maintenance strategy," said Barbara Althoff-Simon, Executive Vice President, Installed Base Maintenance and Support, SAP. "Together with the Eclipse Foundation, SAP has helped define a long-term support model – Eclipse Long Term Support – which is a big step towards enterprise maturity of open source software. It will further strengthen the position of the Eclipse Foundation and its ecosystem."
"Collaborations like the Eclipse Long Term Support Initiative are essential to fueling innovation in the open source space and we are glad to be a part of this initiative," said Salvatore Vella, IBM Vice President of Software Architecture and Technology.
"Eclipse is once again innovating in the space of enterprise driven Open Source projects, and we are happy to be part of it. The vendor neutral and shared infrastructure allows us and our partners to build a long lived support ecosystem. Extended sustainability and lower cost are significant benefits for us as a support provider and for our customers." says Jochen Krause, CEO of EclipseSource.
"This is an important step that will advance the enduring value of open source," said Paul Lipton, CA Technologies vice president of industry standards and open source. "CA Technologies is pleased to be a part of the establishment of this important new Industry Work Group, which will further develop the unique, innovative contribution of the Eclipse Foundation to the IT industry and its customers."
LTS has been established as an Eclipse Industry Working Group and will operate under the governance of the Eclipse Foundation. More information about LTS can be found at lts.eclipse.org