The Eclipse consortium has filed papers to change its corporate status and expects to complete the process by the first week of February, said Eclipse chairman Skip McGaughey. The long expected change is timed to coincide with an Eclipse technical conference, EclipseCon 2004, which is to be held in Anaheim, California from 2 February to 5 February.
The current Eclipse consortium, which is made up of about 50 software companies, will be incorporated as the Eclipse Foundation, a non-profit modelled after other successful open source organisations, such as the Apache Foundation, said McGaughey.
Eclipse will establish tiered membership levels and a board of directors made up of "strategic partners" that will contribute cash and people to Eclipse, he said.
The plan is to create a board with members from small and large companies representing traditional information technology, Linux and embedded systems, McGaughey said. Membership is free for individual contributors and non-profit organisations, such as universities and other open sources outfits. Commercial companies can also join for $5,000 (£2800) if at least one commercial product is based on Eclipse.
The transition from a consortium to an open-source organisation is a long-awaited move in the development tools segment of the software industry.
IBM started Eclipse in November 2001 with a $40m donation and has contributed significantly to its development. The Eclipse software creates a software "framework" for using different development tools, such as a code editor and an application modeling tool, within the same application.
Some software industry executives have complained that IBM dominates Eclipse. The Eclipse code is the basis for IBM's strategy to create common development environment for all its software products. In citing reasons why Java creator Sun Microsystems did not join Eclipse last month, Sun said that "IBM ultimately proved unwilling to offer any equitable proposals, while rejecting two of our own."
McGaughey, an IBM executive on loan to Eclipse, characterises the change in Eclipse's status as an evolution from its current make-up.
"It's really hard to have an industry initiative of the significance of Eclipse when one company dominates," he said. "Eclipse is too big for any one company."
Eclipse membership has grown quickly during the past year and a half to 50 companies, and the software has become very popular with Java programmers, in particular.
