Last Wednesday, Nuxeo posted a proposal to contribute its core software into a new Open Source Project within the Eclipse Foundation called the Eclipse Enterprise Content Repository (ECR) Project. I am very excited about this move, as I truly think large scale Open Source projects thrive within the realm of a vendor-neutral organization rather than in a vendor managed Open Source community. I think this will help increase our capacity for innovation at Nuxeo and will also positively impact our product adoption and boost collaboration opportunities and technological alliances in the future.

I don’t want to write a long blog post here, but rather share a few simple reasons about why I’m thrilled about this decision and very excited about what’s coming next. So here it is—my 5 simple reasons for being passionate by this contribution to the Eclipse Foundation:

1. Looking backward, I am really impressed and full of respect for what the Eclipse Foundation has achieved over the past few years. It’s been an incredible journey to see it evolve and grow far beyond what it was initially—from an IDE (and I was a Netbeans guy at the time …) to a huge open source community and ecosystem.
2. Looking forward, especially at new projects emerging from the Foundation such as the Orion project, I believe that the momentum for innovation is still on the upswing, and the Eclipse Foundation will be a vibrant place for ingenuity for many years, with many opportunities to explore.
3. What’s happening within the Eclipse Foundation and our Product Strategy are strongly compatible. We both share a love for developers and a strong desire to provide them with outstanding tools to better develop their projects!
4. From a software standpoint, the relationships with existing projects in the Eclipse Foundation, and especially in the Runtime project are self-evident. No need to elaborate here on how the Nuxeo Enterprise Platform can leverage and team well with the Equinox OSGi framework, the Jetty web container, Gemini, Virgo, P2 …
5. From an Open Source business point of view, I really like the balance between community and business that’s fostered by the Eclipse Foundation. Being on the business side of Open Source software ventures for more than 6 years now, and being convinced of the value of the Open Source development model, I have often encountered misunderstandings, arguments or incompatibilities between people thinking they are on two opposed sides, community OR business, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I really have the impression that the Eclipse Foundation is a playground where both aspects of the software activity can coexist in harmony—making it an extremely dynamic and healthy environment!

To conclude, as I would like to keep this short, I will simply point to two excellent blog posts that went out last week right after our announcement: the explanation from Eric, our CEO, regarding why Nuxeo made this move, and the very sharp article by Matt Aslett from 451 on our proposal.

… and I added a little sketch of the Nuxeo Product Offering to show just how much the Eclipse ECR Project will be at the core of our Product portfolio and how much we will take care of it, as it will be at the heart of any of new product development.

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