Huawei Becomes a Strategic Member of the Eclipse Foundation

I am pleased to share today that Huawei has become a strategic member of the Eclipse Foundation. Huawei has already been a long-time member of the Eclipse Foundation and contributed to a number of projects there. But, now we are upgrading our participation to a strategic level.

Huawei has been a strong supporter of open source and is already a strategic member of many other open source organizations. We are a platinum member of and top contributor to the Linux Foundation, OpenStack Foundation, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, and OPNFV. Huawei also contributes to and leads many projects for the Apache Foundation such as OpenSDS and ServiceComb. Indeed, Huawei consistently ranks among both the top global open source contributors specifically and global investors in R&D generally.

Why then, is Huawei now also strategically partnering with Eclipse? We have three primary reasons:

• A strong set of shared common values around open source governance
• A strong mutual focus in Europe
• A strong alignment around open source technologies

Common Values around Open Source Governance

At Huawei, we prefer to have both open source software and open governance around our projects. Often times, companies will open source software but retain overall governance control of these projects. With these single-vendor projects, the community is not empowered to guide their overall direction, even if it has full access to code. Sometimes, this leads to adverse results, such as splits and forks between the community and vendor, projects being relicensed out of open source, or project failures.

An open source foundation with strong open governance, though, ensures that everyone can participate not only in sharing code but also in the overall benefits of a project, as long as they contribute. Eclipse has a stellar track record for providing open governance for over 380 projects and about 200 million lines of code. So, we are excited to engage with Eclipse more strategically both on existing and new open source projects.

Mutual Focus on Europe

Huawei is a global company that does business in over 170 countries and regions. But, Europe is one of the regions where Huawei has invested the most, from operating many R&D centers and joint development labs with partners, to participating in EU research projects and supporting academic research at leading universities, to bringing many innovative solutions to market.

Similarly, Eclipse Foundation is especially strong in Europe. It operates the wholly owned European subsidiary, Eclipse Foundation Europe GmbH and participates in many EU research projects, maintaining a talented local staff to work with project teams in Europe.

We are excited to be able to collaborate with Eclipse to further grow the open source ecosystem together in Europe, along with our many European partners.

Alignment on Open Source Technologies

Eclipse Foundation has 4 strategic focus areas:

• Cloud Native Java
• IoT & Edge
• Automotive
• Tools

At Huawei, we also have strong technologies across each of these areas. For example:

• Cloud Native Java: Across our platforms such as Huawei Cloud public cloud, Intelligent Computing server lines, and Huawei Cloud Stack hybrid cloud, Java is quite popular for developing and running applications.
• IoT & Edge: Huawei has many IoT and Edge solutions, ranging from intelligent consumer devices and smart phones to enterprise edge clouds and IoT cloud services to many different kinds of connectivity solutions, including 5G and NB-IoT. We also recently announced HarmonyOS, our microkernel distributed operating system highly optimized for IoT devices
• Automotive: Huawei partners with many automobile manufacturers around the world to provide technologies and solutions, including mobile data centers, energy systems, communication systems, and cloud-based AI training systems
• Tools: Huawei provides many different developer tools and solutions, such as our ModelArts AI development platform, DevCloud online platform for application development, and mobile development tools such as our Ark Compiler for optimizing Android applications and cross-compiling to other platforms. Huawei recently launched our Developer Program 2.0 at Huawei Connect 2019, which includes a US$1.5 billion investment and will reach 5 million developers

To Shared Success

At Huawei, we believe that open source software with open governance is the best way to work together for everyone’s mutual benefit. We are looking forward to a successful partnership with Eclipse Foundation and to working together with everyone in open source.

Disclaimer: Any views and/or opinions expressed in this post by individual authors or contributors are their personal views and/or opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views and/or opinions of Huawei Technologies.