Membership Prospectus
Who We Are
The Eclipse Foundation provides our global community of individuals and organisations with a business-friendly environment for open source software collaboration and innovation. We host Adoptium, Software Defined Vehicle, Jakarta EE, Eclipse IDE, and over 420 open source projects, including runtimes, tools, specifications, and frameworks for enterprise, cloud, edge, automotive, embedded, IoT, systems engineering, open processor designs, and many others.
We are community-driven, code-first, and commercial-ready.
Headquarted in Brussels, Belgium with a global footprint, the Eclipse Foundation is an international non-profit association supported by over 300 members.
The Opportunity
Participation in open source has emerged as a potent force for competitive advantage. The Eclipse Foundation's value proposition is simple and unique. We enhance global organisations' open source investments with a collaborative, vendor-neutral governance framework which is proven to extend value well beyond code hosting.
Organisations join the Eclipse Foundation to:
Showcase their brand's involvement, thought leadership, and accomplishments in open source
Participate in a thriving developer community, and provide contributions to the Eclipse projects they rely on
Collaborate with other industry participants to advance open source initiatives in a vendor-neutral environment
Protect their strategic investments by participating in defining priorities for maintaining and advancing the technologies critical to their organisations, avoiding leaving the features, quality, and sustainability of important technologies to others or to chance
Optimise development costs, mitigate technical risk, and accelerate time-to-market by participating in projects that represent core capabilities and functionality
Influence broad industry initiatives such as the ongoing development of open specifications, and the pursuit of certification by industry standards bodies
Benefit from ensuring they comply with antitrust laws while sharing intellectual property and embedding clean intellectual property into their commercial products
Prosper by sharing open source commercialization best practices with industry peers
How We Work
At the heart of our operations is a dedicated team of skilled professionals committed to empowering sustainable open source projects and thriving industry collaborations. Our approach is underpinned by openness and transparency, allowing industry leaders like you to collaborate in a vendor-neutral way.
Our portfolio includes industry collaborations of all sizes, based on the goals and needs of our respective communities. We leverage our flexible and pragmatic governance framework to customise our approach to the specific requirements of our members.
Working groups and interest groups such as Software Defined Vehicle, Eclipse ThreadX, Adoptium, and Jakarta EE each advance and support the open source technologies key to their respective industries. These open source collaborative initiatives span multiple industries with a collective value measured in the billions of Euros and growing.
In addition, the Foundation is well equipped to host emerging technologies in their nascent state, bringing industry players together to drive innovation and build out new thriving ecosystems.
What Your Membership Supports
Your membership enables our professional and experienced staff to provide core services to the Eclipse Foundation's thriving global ecosystem of committers, contributors, users, and commercial adopters:
Governance: We define and maintain processes to enable vendor-neutral, open, and transparent governance, fostering the sustainability and long-term success of projects and collaborations aligned with community interests.
Project Stewardship: We offer services and support to help open source projects consistently achieve their goals, including guiding new projects in implementing the Eclipse Foundation Development Process, a set of principles and best practices for successful vendor neutral, commercial-friendly open source development.
Community Development: We cultivate global communities around Eclipse projects and collaborative initiatives, with the aim of growing a robust and diverse contributor pipeline.
Ecosystem Development: We recruit members and collaborate with related industry organisations and initiatives to foster a diverse open source ecosystem.
Branding and Marketing: We develop and implement strategies to establish and promote distinctive identities for our open source projects and industry collaborations.
Events: We host events, both in-person and virtual, bringing together open source developers and industry stakeholders for networking, information-sharing, and collaboration on the latest technologies.
Infrastructure: Based on industry best practices, we provide vendor-neutral management and support of reliable and scalable IT infrastructure services including source code repositories, CI/CD infrastructure, download sites, communication channels, and websites.
Security: We uphold the security and integrity of the Eclipse Foundation's community, projects, systems, and data by adhering to industry-leading practices and standards in software production, risk management, and incident response.
Specification Development: We help our industry collaborations significantly reduce the costs and streamline the effort involved in developing industry consensus specifications, using the Eclipse Foundation Specification Process. As an approved JTC1 PAS submitter, select specifications can optionally be proposed as international standards at ISO/IEC.
Community Recognition and Rewards: We acknowledge and reward committers, contributors, and community members for their efforts through awards, badges, articles, blogs, social media posts, and more.
Memberships to Suit Every Organisation
The foundation offers three levels of membership for organisations: Strategic (organisations with a strategic interest in the foundation), Contributing (for-profit corporations), and Associate (not-for-profits, research or educational institutions, etc.). Learn more about the membership levels.
Strategic
- Seat on Board of Directors of Eclipse Foundation
- Seat on Foundation councils, including both the Planning and Architecture councils
- Intellectual property analysis and reporting
- Help to launch open source initiative(s)
- Direct influence through Board voting rights on key aspects of the Eclipse ecosystem, including licensing, governing policy development, project reviews, and amendments to Membership Agreement and Bylaws
- Significant discounts towards sponsorship and attendance of Eclipse Foundation run events
- Access to Eclipse Foundation marketing and advertising programs
- Ability to lead in the establishment of working groups
- Access to information (mail lists, attend members-only meetings)
- Show of support (logo exchange, etc.)
Contributing
- Voting rights for board representation, project reviews, and amendments to Membership Agreement and Bylaws
- Significant discounts towards sponsorship and attendance of Eclipse Foundation run events such as EclipseCon and Open Code Experience
- Access to Eclipse Foundation marketing and advertising programs
- Ability to participate in working groups
- Access to information (mail lists, attend members-only meetings)
- Show of support (logo exchange, etc.)
Associate
- Access to information (mail lists, attend members-only meetings)
- Ability to join select Eclipse working groups as a Guest member
- Show of support (logo exchange, etc.)
Membership Fees
| Annual Eclipse Foundation Membership Fees | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual Corporate Revenues | Strategic | Contributing | Associate |
| > €1 billion | €300 000 | €25 000 | €25 000 |
| €100 million - €1 billion | €180 000 | €17 500 | €17 500 |
| €50 million - €100 million | €125 000 | €12 500 | €12 500 |
| €10 million - €50 million | €60 000 | €9 000 | €9 000 |
| < €10 million | €30 000 | €6 000 | €6 000 |
| < €1 million & fewer than < 10 employees | €30 000 | €1 500 | €1 500 |
| Govt, Govt agencies, Research Organisations, NGOs, etc. | €30 000 | €6 000 | €0 |
| Academic, Publishing Organisations, User Groups, etc. | €30 000 | €1 000 | €0 |
The above membership fees are independent of any fees for participating in various Eclipse Foundation industry collaborations, each of which has a separate fee schedule.
How Your Organisation Can Become a Member
Once you have chosen the level of membership (e.g., Strategic, Contributing, Associate):
Complete the Membership Application Form
Through the application form, you will be asked to provide the necessary information to complete your application and to sign the following documents:
- Membership Application
- Membership Agreement
- Member Committer and Contributor Agreement (optional, but recommended)
If you would prefer, you may instead download, complete, and sign the documents and email to us for processing.
Note: Membership in an Eclipse Foundation industry collaboration requires the execution of that industry collaboration’s Participation Agreement. For more information view our list of the current Eclipse Foundation industry collaborations.
Join Us!
To learn more about the benefits of Eclipse Foundation membership, or how the foundation enables community-driven industry collaborations, please contact the Membership Coordination Team at membership@eclipse.org.