Oracle commits to Eclipse persistence project, joins board of directors

EclipseCon 2007: In a surprise move, Oracle announced today it is donating its Java persistence framework, Oracle TopLink, to the Eclipse community under the Eclipse Public License. A new project called "EclipseLink" is expected to be formed to oversee development of the software, with Oracle at the helm.

Additionally, Oracle will become a Strategic Member of the Eclipse Foundation, and join the board of directors. Strategic Members fund the open source organization and provide most of its committers. Other Strategic Members include industry leaders such as Sybase, BEA, CA, and SAP. From the EclipseLink FAQ:

Before becoming a Strategic Member, Oracle was leading three projects (Dali JPA Tools, JavaServer Faces Tools, BPEL) and participating in the Data Tools Platform’s Enablement project. The Eclipse Persistence Platform project involves the dedication of a significant number of additional Oracle developers as well as a sizeable code contribution. The move to Strategic Member level reflects the sizeof the commitment Oracle is making to the Eclipse community and Oracle’s interest in the success of Eclipse and the projects it is involved with.

EclipseLink will be based on the OSGi technology platform. Oracle TopLink will continue to exist, as a commercially supported version of EclipseLink integrated into the Oracle Application Server.

In future versions of Oracle TopLink, the core persistence functionality will be provided by the Eclipse Persistence Platform. Customers can expect to find their persistence capabilities grow and to see a continued focus on performance, scalability, flexibility, and developer productivity.

Source: Oracle