Small revolution in the world of the great foundations of open source computing: the Eclipse foundation moves its headquarters from the United States to Brussels.

 

Gaël Blondelle, head of the foundation's European team, explains that the organization is currently registered as a non-profit organization in Delaware. It will leave this status to become European, with the status of an international non-profit association (AISBL): a Belgian legal structure "made for people like us, since it allows us to keep an international coverage while being based in Belgium. [...] For us, there was a window of opportunity, because we have the impression that Europe likes open source very much, and more and more. [...] We have the opportunity to become the European open source foundation of reference: there is not yet one with a European headquarters and an international reach. Moreover, if we don't do it ourselves, Europe will need it sooner or later and we will end up seeing new competitors appear. [...] This move is a strategic move, it's an opportunity to have a clear difference and strategic advantage over other generalist foundations".

 

While continuing to support its members in the United States, Asia, etc., the foundation hopes to accelerate its development in Europe. The sustained interest of the European institutions in recent years was one of the reasons for choosing Brussels.

 

As far as industry is concerned, particularly in the automotive sector, Gaël Blondelle notes that "we already have a strong activity in Europe, several collaborations with major manufacturers and equipment suppliers, mostly German - BMW, Daimler, the Volkswagen group". Eclipse's IoT and Edge Computing projects are also already very active in Europe. The foundation has also been involved in European research projects since 2013.

Gaël Blondelle emphasizes in passing that "to lead an open source project, it is not always enough to publish your code on GitHub and to put a license a little randomly or by habit. [...] The role of open source foundations is to go further, by providing rigorous management of intellectual property and the guarantee that we have a neutral environment - compared to projects run by a single company, for example."

 

 

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Source : ZDNet