2008 Roadmap

This document is under construction!

Introduction

As required by the Eclipse Development Process, this document describes the Eclipse Roadmap.

The Roadmap is intended to be a living document which will see future iterations. This document is the third version of the Eclipse Roadmap, and is labeled as version 3.0. In order to preserve this document while the underlying information evolves, the pages have been frozen by copying them from their original project hosted locations.

The goal of the Roadmap is to provide the Eclipse ecosystem with guidance and visibility on the future directions of the Eclipse open source community. An important element in this visibility is that the Roadmap determines what projects will be accepted by Eclipse during the life of this revision of the Roadmap. In other words, new projects must be consistent with the Roadmap. This does not mean that every new project must be explicitly envisaged by the Roadmap. It does mean that new projects cannot be inconsistent with the stated directions of Eclipse. In particular, Eclipse expects that incubator projects created in the Technology PMC will cover areas not explicitly described in the Roadmap.

There are three main sections to this document:

1. This Preamble provides some background on Eclipse and the Foundation, and identifies the strategic goals of Eclipse. It also provides a brief overview of the scope of future projects
2. The Themes and Priorities which has been developed by the Eclipse Requirements Council.
3. The Platform Release Plan which has been developed by the Eclipse Planning Council.

Background

As defined on our website, the role of the Foundation is:

Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on building an open development platform comprised of extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes for building, deploying and managing software across the lifecycle. A large and vibrant ecosystem of major technology vendors, innovative start-ups, universities, research institutions and individuals extend, complement and support the Eclipse platform.

As defined in our Bylaws the Purposes of the Eclipse Foundation are:

The Eclipse technology is a vendor-neutral, open development platform supplying frameworks and exemplary, extensible tools (the “Eclipse Platform”). Eclipse Platform tools are exemplary in that they verify the utility of the Eclipse frameworks, illustrate the appropriate use of those frameworks, and support the development and maintenance of the Eclipse Platform itself; Eclipse Platform tools are extensible in that their functionality is accessible via documented programmatic interfaces. The purpose of Eclipse Foundation Inc., (the “Eclipse Foundation”), is to advance the creation, evolution, promotion, and support of the Eclipse Platform and to cultivate both an open source community and an ecosystem of complementary products, capabilities, and services.

Strategic Goals

The following are the strategic goals of Eclipse.

1. To define a vendor-neutral, open development platform which demonstrates technology leadership and innovation. As an open development platform, Eclipse provides support for multiple operating environments and multiple programming languages. The goal of Eclipse is to define for the industry a development and runtime platform (e.g. Equinox, RCP) which is freely licensed, open source and provides support for the full breadth of the application lifecycle, in many disparate problem domains, across the development and deployment platforms of choice.
   
2. Eclipse has had an enviable track record of building and maintaining a strong and recognized name within the worldwide developer community. The Eclipse Foundation will continue to invest to ensure that Eclipse is recognized as a leading open source community with exciting, innovative technologies.
   
3. To foster growth and adoption of Eclipse technology. Since its inception, there has been rapid growth in people using Eclipse as their personal toolset, as a platform for building their plug-ins, and as the basis for their commercial products.
   
   The high rate of adoption of the Eclipse technology can be traced to two key factors: great technology, and the ease with which it can be adopted by others, both commercial and open source. This ease of adoption has, in turn, several dimensions. The EPL provides terms which are conducive to both commercial and open source use. The focus on extensible frameworks has made it relatively simple to re-use Eclipse Technology in both products and applications.
   
4. To cultivate the commercial success of the Eclipse ecosystem. The creation of a large community of commercial and open source organizations which rely on and/or complement Eclipse technology has been a major factor in the success of Eclipse. Each time Eclipse technology is used in the development of a product, service or application the Eclipse community is strengthened.