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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is an Eclipse Foundation Working Group?

Working groups at the Eclipse Foundation are designed to unite members in the pursuit of common objectives through open and collaborative environments. These groups operate under the guiding principles of openness, transparency, and vendor neutrality, ensuring that all members have equal opportunities to participate and that all activities, from meetings to documentation, are conducted in an open manner. This framework fosters an environment where organizations can collaborate on developing specifications and open source projects, with a clear emphasis on adhering to antitrust policies to ensure fairness and prevent anti-competitive practices.

What is the Eclipse Dataspaces Working Group and what does it aim to achieve?

The Eclipse Dataspaces Working Group is a collaborative, vendor-neutral initiative hosted by the Eclipse Foundation that brings together individuals and organizations to develop open source software and specifications for dataspaces. Its mission is to build scalable, interoperable, and industry-ready components based on open standards to enable trusted data sharing ecosystems.

How does the Working Group promote interoperability between different dataspace projects?

The Eclipse Dataspace Working Group promotes interoperability by aligning projects standardizing core protocols under the purview of the EDWG. The projects are utilizing the Eclipse Specification Process. The interoperability and compatibility between systems is therefore testable and validatable utilizing Technology Compatibility Kits. The specification of this technical foundation for Dataspaces is one of the key pilars for EDWG. These protocols enable interoperability on technical layer, while the operation on an economic layer or interoperaility in a legal layer may require further concepts and specification to fully enable interoperability in those layers and between those layers. Our group ensures that diverse open source implementations can interoperate while allowing competing or overlapping solutions to coexist within the ecosystem.

What is the role of open source software in the Working Group’s mission?

Open source software is central to the group’s activities. It fosters collaboration, transparency, and reusability. The group provides strategic guidance, open specification, technical compatibility checks, and open source references for an ecosystem of all kinds of projects that implement dataspace technologies and supports their integration into developer toolchains and reference distributions.

How does the Eclipse Dataspaces Working Group engage with the broader community and industry?

The group promotes global adoption of dataspace technologies by collaborating with standards bodies, engaging with other open source communities, and offering open participation through public communication channels like GitLab and mailing lists. It also provides vendor-neutral marketing and supports sustainable community funding.

How the Eclipse Foundation Governance and processes support implementers of specifications?

The Eclipse Foundation’s structure supports a balanced approach to intellectual property. It facilitates the creation of specifications and related technology, while ensuring that all participants operate within the bounds of the Eclipse Foundation Intellectual Property Policy. This not only helps in clarifying the use of trademarks and maintaining the integrity of specifications but also in managing the patent grants to protect contributors and users of the technology. Through this well-defined process, the Eclipse Foundation provides a fertile ground for innovation and collaboration, which is exemplified by the activities within the Eclipse Dataspaces Working Group, where members are focused on providing a sound interoperability stack for dataspace technologies.

Is the EDWG and its projects open to integrate external requirements?

Yes, the EDWG and its projects operate under the umbrella of openness, transparency, meritocracy and vendor neutrality principles. New requests or requirements can be directly posted using the EDWG mailing list.

Can a patent filed by an EDWG member pose a threat to the EDWG specification projects?

No. Any patent filed by EDWG members participating in EDWG specifications cannot pose a threat to implementers, as long as the specification has reached the final release status.

EDWG member patents, as per the Eclipse Foundation Intellectual Property Policy and Eclipse Foundation Specification Process, are licensed to each project where the member participates with at least one participant. It is the formal participation that triggers the license, not contribution.

The Eclipse Foundation, through its Intellectual Property Policy and Specification Process, offers several layers of protection and fosters a beneficial environment for developers and implementers.

Instead of posing as a threat, a member-filed patent benefits the Eclipse ecosystem as the patent rights are granted under Royalty Free Terms: Under the Implementation Patent License, patents filed by members are licensed under Royalty Free terms. This ensures that the technology is accessible to all implementers, promoting wider adoption and interoperability.

In conclusion, we believe that Eclipse Specifications are the most protected specifications from a software patent point of view.

More information about how the Eclipse Foundation Specification Process handles the IP flows is detaled in this FAQ. Relationship between patents and specificaitons is also described in Annex A of the Eclipse Foundation Specification Process Operations Guide. Last but not least, the Eclipse Foundation Executive Director published recently a blog post also ellaborating on the topic.

Where do I start with dataspaces?

Dataspaces combine a technical layer, an economic layer and a legislative layer for trusted data sharing. The concepts and characteristics of Dataspaces are well described in ISO/IEC DIS 20151. The Eclipse Dataspace Working Groups focuses on the technical layer. Our specification projects provide a foundation. Open Source Projects like the Eclipse Dataspace Components provide a great point to start, especailly with the ‘Hello World’ example in the Minimum Viable Dataspace. For a broader perspective, the work of the EDWG members can provide further guidance.

Which are the projects under the purview of the EDWG?

The EDWG has a number of projects under its purview, as detailed in the projects section of the web page. It is very important to note that these projects are completely open for participants and contributions. It is NOT required to be an EDWG member to participate in these projects. The EDWG is helping the projects shape their strategy, interoperability and standardisation, but they remain independent (as described in the Eclipse Foundation Development Process). The EDWG therefore encourages and embraces participation and feedback on those projects from all the Dataspace Community.

There are 2 Open Source implementation projects under the purview of the EDWG. These projects develop usable open source software modules for building dataspaces. Other Eclipse Projects working on Dataspaces are invited to ask for inclusion in this list. They will be provided with a clear criteria to align rodamaps and strategy in order to do so.

There are 4 Open Source specification projects under the purview of the EDWG. These projects define protocols and profiles that the EDWG will help standardising at international level. The creation and release of these projects is approved by the EDWG as defined in the Eclipse Foundation Specification Process.

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