Microsoft has become a Strategic Member of the Eclipse Foundation with Stephen Walli, Principal Program Manager in the Azure Office of the CTO, joining the foundation's board of directors.

The non-profit Eclipse Foundation not only oversees the Eclipse IDE, but is also the steward of enterprise Java (Jakarta), and the Eclipse MicroProfile. As we reported, Microsoft joined the foundation as a Solutions (now Contributing) Member in 2016 at which time Shanki Niyogi, General Manager of Visual Studio at Microsoft said:

"Joining the Eclipse Foundation enables us to collaborate more closely with the Eclipse community, deliver a great set of tools and services for all development teams, and continuously improve our cloud services, SDKs and tools." 

To coincide with joining the foundation, Microsoft updated its Azure Toolkit for Eclipse, with its support for the deployment of lightweight Java applications and for Web app management using the Azure Explorer view.

Now Microsoft is updating from the lower level of membership of the Eclipse foundation to the higher level, alongside IBM, Oracle, Huawei and SAP, among others. Among other privileges, Strategic Members have a seat on the foundation's board of directors and its architecture council and it is Stephen Walli who will be the new board member representing Microsoft.

In the blog post Microsoft expands support with The Eclipse Foundation Walli explains:

The Eclipse Foundation remains a vital cornerstone of the Java ecosystem. Microsoft is committed to Java developers and the health of the Java ecosystem, actively participating in Eclipse Adoptium (formerly AdoptOpenJDK) and other projects. Expanding our involvement with the Foundation as a Strategic Member will help advance modern Java initiatives in the spirit of open source.

He continues:

Open source non-profits serve an important role in the community, providing the structure to enable projects to reach their next opportunity of growth. Companies support such non-profits because it supports their engagement in the non-profit’s projects, supports relationships with collaborating partners, and supports the developer communities at large. Having a rich ecosystem of healthy non-profits supporting different groups of Open-Source-Initiative-licensed projects and their project ecosystems is a must. At Microsoft, we are committed to continuing to support and participate across the non-profit ecosystem, as well as engage in projects themselves.

This sentiment endorses a growing recognition that a strong relationship between Microsoft and prominent open source organizations, recently including the Python Software Foundation, is the way forward for the future of sustainable technology. 

More Information

Microsoft expands support with The Eclipse Foundation

Eclipse Foundation

Related Articles

Microsoft Joins Eclipse

Eclipse Launches Working Group For Cloud Development Tools

To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin.

Comments

Make a Comment or View Existing Comments Using Disqus

or email your comment to: comments@i-programmer.info