The Eclipse Foundation has announced the creation of a new open source initiative aiming to define and implement a standard platform for the software development tools used in the automotive industry.
German carmaker BMW Group, the automotive suppliers Robert Bosch GmbH and Continental AG, and the Eclipse Strategic Member itemis AG from Lünen, Germany are founding members of the initiative that will operate as an Eclipse Industry Working Group.
The new Eclipse Automotive Industry Working Group will be open to any organisations that want to participate in the goal of establishing a standard tools platform that will be used throughout the automotive supply chain, said Eclipse Foundation.
The foundation hope sthat the initiative will be platform for improvements and innovations in the software development tools that are required to accelerate product development and improve integration across the automotive supply chain.
Robert Bosch GmbH Corporate Sector Research and Advance Engineering senior expert Harald Mackamul said that creating a standard platform for automotive tools would help the company to innovate without compromising quality.
Mackamul added, "Collaborating with an open source community will allow us to share the costs and best practices for building new tools with other companies in the automotive industry. We see this open innovation as the future for our software tools strategy."
Continental Automotive IT PLM Systems and Software chief Ignacio Garro said, "While we bundle forces to create the platform that we need, we provide a platform to our tools vendors that they can use to seamlessly integrate their products in our workbench. In addition, the Eclipse Public License enables us to modify and extend the platform to our needs!"
The Automotive Industry Working Group will operate under the Eclipse Foundation and the results of the working group will be made available under the Eclipse Public License (EPL), a commercial open source license.
