• Share this article:

Open Source Collaboration: The Eclipse Foundation's Impactful 2023

Tuesday, February 20, 2024 - 12:05 by Thabang Mashologu

2023 was a fantastic year for the Eclipse Foundation, as marked by the continued growth of our industry collaborations. Throughout the year, we expanded our role as the open source centre of gravity for the enterprise Java industry, advanced development in software defined vehicles, built on our leadership in the embedded and IoT space, and more. As we dive into 2024, our commitment to expanding in these and other areas offers a solid foundation for welcoming developers and organisations around the world to join us in exploring the opportunities and benefits of vendor-neutral collaboration. Our industry collaborations offer a proven, flexible, and scalable "foundation-as-a-service" model which allows developer communities and companies to focus on what they want to achieve, not on worrying how to get it done.

 

The addition of 42 new members, including industry giants such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, highlights the Eclipse Foundation's broad appeal as a diverse global community of developers and organisations of all sizes. This shared vision of creating useful open technologies contributes to our vibrant ecosystem, currently consisting of 21 distinct industry collaborations that showcase the foundation's pivotal role in bringing together diverse stakeholders to address complex technological challenges. Over the past 20 years, starting with the original Eclipse IDE consortium, we have supported a wide range of participants, from the world's largest companies to small developer communities. We provide a vendor-neutral and commercially-friendly environment where their open source projects can thrive.

 

Among our achievements, Jakarta EE continued to demonstrate remarkable growth in 2023. Since its inception, the working group has delivered four major releases and expanded to 60 projects, supported by a collaborative community of 28 working group members and 114 committers. Jakarta EE has revitalised the enterprise Java ecosystem, with industry players producing 71 new Jakarta EE-compatible products, indicating a growing number of such products. According to the 2023 Jakarta EE Developer Survey of over 2,200 industry professionals, an estimated 60% of enterprises have adopted Jakarta EE or plan to do so in the near future. This, combined with the widespread adoption of Eclipse Temurin (300 million downloads and counting!) and the expansion of the Adoptium Working Group, exemplifies our mission to deliver secure, robust, and enterprise-ready open source Java technologies.

 

2023 also marked significant milestones, such as Sparkplug® 3.0 becoming an ISO/IEC International Standard and the launch of the Eclipse Dataspace Working Group, which aims to revolutionise trusted data exchange in global business ecosystems. Microsoft's contribution of Azure RTOS technology to the Eclipse Foundation under the Eclipse ThreadX open source project further illustrates the foundation's influence in shaping the future of open source in critical industries. With over 12 billion devices deployed, this mature technology is particularly relevant to the IIoT and automotive industries. It stands out as the only open source Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) with multiple certifications for safety and reliability.

 

At the core of the Eclipse Foundation's success is our holistic approach to fostering industry collaboration. Through comprehensive support services, including governance, project stewardship, community development, fundraising support, marketing, and events, we've cultivated a vendor-neutral environment for fostering the sustainability and long-term industry success of open source projects and collaborations aligned with community interests. From small developer communities to the Fortune 100, we enable people and organisations to come together to solve problems ranging from funding business-critical projects to developing specifications and proposing international standards. 

 

To learn more and get involved, visit eclipse.org/collaborations. Start collaborating today by joining an existing community or bringing your industry-changing collaboration to the Eclipse Foundation.