Mike Milinkovich’s talk at EclipseCon’s Member Meeting
Every quarter, the Eclipse Foundation has a Member Meeting. This quarter’s meeting took place at EclipseCon on Monday, from 1:30-6:00 pm.
The most eagerly anticipated presentation of the member meeting is the report from the Foundation’s director, Mike Milinkovich. As usual, Mike didn’t disappoint.
Mike (pictured in photo from anniejay) highlighted the continued growth of the Foundation. it’s up to 179 Members (that is, companies that have signed on the bottom line that they’ll support Eclipse), of which 21 are Strategic Members (that is, companies that pay big bucks to have more influence). The goal is to end the year with more than 200 members.
Meanwhile, the organization has 942 Committers (that is, active developers who have read/write access to the source code repository).
According to Mike, new growth in membership will come from outside Eclipse’s traditional ISV base, through a new group of “Corporate” Members. To that end, the Foundation is shortly going to propose a new membership category for large financial institutions, large healthcare companies, manufacturers and other companies like that.
These non-ISV companies are extremely committed to Eclipse, and wish to participate. However, unlike traditional ISV members, they have no intention of releasing products based on Eclipse, because they don’t sell software. (The current bylaws require that members commit to release Eclipse-based products.) Even so, they wish to be “inside the tent,” and will contribute to Eclipse’s success and code base by participating in projects.
The benefits to those companies for joining the Eclipse Foundation are clear: greater influence, and more opportunity to help leverage Eclipse for their internal software development efforts. Being part of Eclipse will also provide those big companies with frameworks for industry-specific projects, using the Foundation’s license and intellectual-property vetting system to foster collaboration.
The benefits to the Foundation are equally clear, said Mike. Bringing those vertical-industry companies into the Foundation will provide more resources for supporting projects. It will, also, increase funding for the Foundation, which will drive new services. It also, he added, help protect the health of the ecosystem, because those new members might be insulated from market conditions that could affect ISVs.
Corporate members will be charged, of course, for participation. Mike suggested that the fee would be $125,000 per annum. If that sounds high, it’s not. If a huge bank or insurance company with thousands of developers saved merely the equivalent of two developers-years by leveraging the Eclipse code base or by getting Eclipse projects to better support their requirements, they’ve more than repaid that investment.
Corporate membership seems like a great idea, and could help offset one of the potential weaknesses of the Eclipse Foundation. Because nearly all its most active members are software companies, new projects tend to be focused on supporting the competitive needs of those same software vendors. By bringing more consumers of Eclipse’s technology into the tent, Eclipse’s projects may become more democratic, more customer-driven and less vendor-centric. That is unquestionably a Good Thing.