Specifications

The Eclipse Foundation facilitates the development of code-first, open specifications that enable the compatibility, interoperability, and sustainability of both proprietary and open source independent implementations.

Specifications at the Eclipse Foundation are developed through the Eclipse Foundation Specification Process (EFSP). The EFSP provides a defined, structured, and trusted legal framework and governance process for the development of royalty-free open specifications based on mature open source processes. The EFSP allows the community to develop specifications in a vendor neutral, community-driven way.

All specifications produced under the EFSP are designed to enable independent implementations in any open source or commercial application.

A Proven Approach

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Community Driven

Our specification process is designed to be inclusive of everyone from the largest corporations to motivated individuals. 

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Flexible

Specifications allow implementations to have the highest degree of flexibility and interchangeability for adjustments, enhancements, replacements, and upgrades.

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Ecosystem Enablement

Our specification processes enable independent implementations under both proprietary and open source licensing models.

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Investment Protection

Specifications reduce the risk of vendor lock-in by ensuring implementations meet compatibility and interoperability requirements.

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Vendor Neutral

Open and transparent development processes allow individuals and organizations to collaborate on specifications. Well-documented governance policies and processes ensure that the results are developed and delivered in a vendor neutral manner.

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Open Source

The EFSP complies with the Open Standards Requirement for Software established by the Open Source Initiative, ensuring that all Eclipse Foundation specifications can be implemented in open source.

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Proven

The EFSP is built on more than 17 years of open source stewardship and used by multi-billion-dollar ecosystems. 

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Compatibility and Branding

The EFSP allows for the development of a compatibility brand. Established compatibility brands clearly identify the compatibility, interoperability, and sustainability of production-ready open source and commercial implementations.

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Current initiatives

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AsciiDoc

Specifications for the AsciiDoc language and the APIs processing it.

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Eclipse Dataspace

A forum to build and promote the specifications needed to create scalable, modular, extensible, industry-ready, interoperable, trusted and sovereign open source components based on open standards for dataspaces.

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Jakarta EE

The industry-leading specification for developing enterprise and cloud native java applications.

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MicroProfile

An open forum to optimize Enterprise Java for a microservices architecture.

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Open Regulatory Compliance

The ORC WG aims to develop specifications for regulatory compliance that can be transformed into international standards.

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OSGi

Specifications that enable development, deployment, and management of embedded, server-side, and cloud native applications.

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Sparkplug

Provides MQTT clients the framework to seamlessly integrate industrial machine data from their applications, sensors, devices, and gateways within the MQTT Infrastructure.