Life at Eclipse

License proliferation has been a hot topic amongst the open source community for the past couple of years. I am happy to report that the Eclipse Foundation and IBM have collaborated to do our bit to help by superseding the Common Public License (CPL) with the Eclipse Public License (EPL). This means that the CPL will no longer be considered an active open source license.

Perhaps the best way to explain this is via a Q&A:

1. What was actually done?

There was a two step process that was followed to make this happen. First, following the terms of the CPL, IBM assigned the responsibility to serve as the Agreement Steward of the CPL to the Eclipse Foundation. Second, the Eclipse Foundation officially recognized the EPL 1.0 as the new version of the CPL 1.0. In OSI license terminology, the EPL now supersedes the CPL.

A quick read of the two licenses will quickly show that they are very very close. Other than their names and (previously) their Agreement Stewards, the only substantive difference is the breadth of the patent license termination in the event of a patent law suit. (See the second paragraph of Section 7.) For more information on the relationship between the CPL and the EPL see the EPL FAQ.

2. What does this actually mean?

For those projects that are currently using the CPL and wish to continue using it, not much. However this will open up an additional option for those CPL-licensed projects wishing to migrate to the EPL.

Using OSI’s classification of licenses, it means that the CPL will move from the “Licenses that are popular and widely used or with strong communities” to the “Superseded licenses” category as maintained by the OSI. It does not mean that the CPL has disappeared. However, it is the recommendation of the OSI, IBM and the Eclipse Foundation that new projects use the Eclipse license rather than the CPL if this “style” of license appeals to you. See below for more details if you have an existing CPL-licensed project.

3. Why was this done?

License proliferation in open source is a real issue. It costs businesses to review multiple licenses, and the plethora of licenses can be confusing to someone starting a new open source project.

Over the past five years we have seen the Eclipse Foundation go from a good idea that might work to one of the most successful open source communities out there. We have seen the Symbian Foundation adopt the EPL as its license, thereby bringing a huge community and code base in its own right to the EPL, plus demonstrating the utility of the license well outside of the Java domain that it is best known in. More recently, Google also added the EPL as one of the licenses it supports on Google Code. It is clear that if we wanted to consolidate on one license, that the EPL made the most sense.

4. I have a CPL-licensed project. What do I need to do?

You can continue to use it if you want to, although the whole reason we’re making this happen is because we wanted to provide projects with an easy option to migrate to the EPL to help reduce license proliferation.

There is a very simple path to moving your CPL-licensed project to the Eclipse Public License. Since the EPL has been denoted as the successor version of the CPL, you can use a provision in Section 7 (“In addition, after a new version of the Agreement is published, Contributor may elect to distribute the Program (including its Contributions) under the new version.”) to easily switch to the EPL.

5. When does this take effect?

Immediately.

6. Wait a second! The CPL also says “Each new version of the Agreement will be given a distinguishing version number.” How can the EPL 1.0 be a new version of the CPL 1.0?

Well, you’re right. We could have created a CPL 1.1 that simply pointed to the EPL 1.0. But frankly that seemed a lot more confusing than helpful. Especially since the licenses effectively differ by about one-and-a-half sentences. However, more importantly, the EPL is indeed the successor version to the CPL. The Eclipse Foundation and its members developed the EPL from the CPL by modifying those one-and-a-half sentences. The name of the license doesn’t change that history.

Bjorn’s latest blog post on “Not A Product” has received some passionate responses. It is important that everyone understand that the opinions expressed in Bjorn’s post are his own. They are most definitely not the consensus position of either the Eclipse Foundation staff or of the Board.

Bjorn has served the Eclipse community long and well. He deserves the opportunity to express his opinions as he sees fit. If anyone has misinterpreted Bjorn’s posts as some sort of signal of change in the direction of the Eclipse Foundation, I apologize. They are most certainly not.

Since November 2001, the Eclipse ecosystem has been built upon a strongly defined platform built with a high degree of quality and a deep concern for API evolution. Since 2001, Eclipse has shipped binaries to help developers quickly adopt our platform. That is what has gotten us to this level of success, and that is the model we will be using going forward with e4 and beyond.

Well, the nominations are up, and 2009 Eclipse Foundation Board of Directors election is shaping up to be the most interesting yet. There are six nominees for Committer Rep and nine nominees for Sustaining Member Rep, each competing for four available seats. My recollection is that is the largest number of people running we have ever had. It’s great to see the interest and commitment!

We have an interesting cross-section of member companies sponsoring the nominees. There are candidates from large companies (Google, IBM, Red Hat, Wind River), small companies (EclipseSource, Ingres, Instantiations, OpenMake, TaskTop, WebTide, ) and independents (Markus Kuppe, Ed Merks). Of special note is the strong contingent of nominees from German companies (Bredex, empolis, Microdoc).

All-in-all, an excellent slate of candidates. I strongly encourage everyone to read their position papers, engage in the conversation and vote!

Today marks the fifth birthday of the Eclipse Foundation. My how time flies when you’re having fun!

It is customary to mark these types of occasions with a bit of an retrospective. My challenge is to try to condense the swirl of activity that is Eclipse into some common themes and significant highlights.

So here goes: the top three things that I am proud of at the Eclipse Foundation over its first five years:

1. Our community. The Eclipse community is a big place, filled with contributors, committers, users, developers and business people alike. Our community has grown dramatically over the past five years and we think the best is yet to come. But what I really enjoy is the gestalt of the Eclipse community. To best understand the sense of collaboration and innovation that permeates Eclipse, I highly recommend joining us at EclipseCon in March. I know I’m biased, but I really believe it to be one of the best developer conferences on the planet.
2. Our technology. Eclipse’s technology has relatively little to do with the Eclipse Foundation per se, since we do not direct the projects or their technical decisions. However, I think that we at the Foundation can claim that we have helped to recruit new projects and new technology innovations to come to Eclipse. (Yesterday’s announcement that Jetty has proposed moving to Eclipse is a recent example.) And that has resulted in a much larger and more diverse collection of cool projects than I think any of us imagined five years ago.
3. Our team. We really do have a great team working here at the Eclipse Foundation. Every single one is committed to and passionate about the Eclipse community, and works darn hard to make it a better place. Oh ya, and we have a lot of fun as well!

It has certainly been an exciting time over the past five years. I look forward to the challenges and excitement of the next five.