Life at Eclipse

As noticed by Genady and others, the Eclipse Foundation is in the running to join the SE/EE Executive Committee of the Java Community Process. The question, of course, is why? I thought I would share our answer via my blog as well.

…because we think we have a lot to offer the community.

We are intimately tied to Java at Eclipse, and the future success of Java is critical to our future success. You can be sure that the Eclipse Foundation will be a tireless advocate for greater openness and transparency at the JCP.

FWIW, the Eclipse Foundation has been an independent not-for-profit for almost four years.

If elected, I will be Eclipse’s representative on the EC, and will be voting based on the Eclipse Foundation’s independent view of what is best of the Java Community. You have to remember that once you are on the board of any entity (from a publicly traded company to your local hospital charity) you are duty bound to act in the interests of that organization. That is a responsibility I take seriously.

On a somewhat related note, since the Eclipse Foundation itself has a very large board (~30), I’ve had lots of personal practice in consensus building. I suspect that might be of some use at the JCP as well

I hope many of the companies and individuals who are both members of the JCP and supporters of Eclipse will take the time to vote for our community.

Philippe recently asked a question which I think deserves a clear answer:

...is the EPL just a joke, that everybody can ignore?

The answer is, of course, no. We take the Eclipse Public License very seriously.

There have been numerous times when we at the Eclipse Foundation been involved in real or potential license violations of the EPL. As the Agreement Steward for the license, protecting the IP which has been licensed under it is one of our responsibilities.

However, we always initially try to rectify these situations privately and discreetly. To date we have had a 100% success rate resolving misunderstandings following this approach. Including the one that Philippe was hinting at. And that’s really the point: in my experience these are typically misunderstandings, not someone attempting to do something malicious.

So yes, we take the EPL very seriously. Yes, we look into potential issues quickly. But we’ve had good luck using the quiet approach and plan to continue doing so.

BTW, if anyone sees a situation where they think there may be a licensing problem, please let us know at license (at) eclipse.org. We will look into it.