The formation of the Eclipse Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) Working Group last year was a watershed moment in the industry. It was one of the largest launches of a working group in Eclipse Foundation history and represented the beginning of a new approach in the automotive industry. A historically closed-source, architecture-based group of companies began to share code and collaborate, driven by a code-first approach.
The most significant achievements of the working group and ecosystem to date have been as much about community as about code. Here are a few highlights by the numbers:
- 36 members and counting
- 19 projects, with 1 more pending
- 3 code contribution and community get-together day events
- 2 hackathons at BCX and EclipseCon 2022, with another planned for 2023
Creation of First SDV Blueprints
While much of the first year was spent laying the groundwork for future collaboration between members of the working group, that’s not to say there’s nothing to show for a year of working together. We deliberately took a code-first approach to avoid long, drawn-out discussions about top-level architecture and other top-down approaches.
While the projects are progressing well individually through the Eclipse Development Process lifecycle, the SDV community has integrated several of the projects together to create “blueprints”. These blueprints address some very interesting and challenging use cases first identified and prototyped at a SDV hackathon event in Berlin. The frameworks emerging from these initial blueprints show the potential and benefits of utilizing different projects as components to build broader solutions to address more complex problems. The frameworks themselves will become the basis for further incremental development and integration into more advanced solutions.
This demonstrates that our efforts to drive collaboration have already begun to show signs of success. We saw a lot of great stuff come out of our community get-together day events, the hackathons, and in the work on our upcoming distributions.
Open Source Community From a Closed-Source Ecosystem
One of the major achievements we want to highlight is the simple fact that the working group has begun to build a community for software-driven automotive open source development. In fact, the SDV Working Group is one of the fastest growing working groups the Eclipse Foundation has ever had, with companies like Accenture, ARM, Bosch, Capgemini, Continental, ETAS, IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat, SUSE, and ZF, as well as major OEMs like Mercedes-Benz, CARIAD/VW Group, General Motors and Toyota.
It’s also worth mentioning one of the most exciting aspects of the community-building that has happened: the diversity of our member organizations. This is probably the only place in the automotive industry where you will find such a diverse set of participants, ranging from automakers, suppliers and technology companies with revenues in the billions to start-ups, independent experts and government organizations working together and listening to each other.
Code and Community Growth Driving Greater Collaboration
We already have a few excellent examples of collaboration under our belt: the hackathons and code contributions and community get-together days have all helped drive the spirit of collaboration among members of the working group.
But there’s more. This June we’ll be launching the first industry-wide automotive open source event, with the goal of making the Eclipse Foundation the driver of initiatives in the automotive open source industry. We are truly, entirely open source, and we have the internal expertise and capacity to sustain the integration of open source principles and core values into the automotive industry, which hasn’t been done until now.
We’ve already seen a lot of interest. The hackathons and get-togethers were very well-attended — 300-400 registrations per event and a lot of great code coming out of them. With exciting collaborative solutions involving multiple projects underway, more members joining, and more projects starting every day, there’s no better time to get involved with the SDV Working Group if you’ve been considering it. All participants have an equal opportunity to shape the future of the SDV Working Group and play a vital role in the evolution of the automotive industry.
To learn more about getting involved in the Eclipse Software Defined Vehicle Working Group, visit sdv.eclipse.org or email us at membership@eclipse.org.