Eclipse is an open source project. There's no technology to transfer because it's already accessible to everyone. This move is about improving the foundation's governance, and the EU has several advantages over the United States in this regard.

The US doesn't give open source a pass on sanction enforcement. Witness the heavy-handedness of Github post acquisition. Maintaining US operations for a global team can create issues as the political winds shift.

Quite a lot of activity on GitHub isn't open source, especially not where they get their revenue from. But you're right that US authority can have severe impacts.

Genuinely curious. What are these? I was hoping to find these in the article. The article talks about growing in Europe (which seems like it should be possible if the "base" is in North America but with a large EU presence) and working on "innovative new open source projects" which should be doable from anywhere.

>"innovative new open source projects" which should be doable from anywhere

not if you're an Iranian developer and shut out due to US sanctions, which someone like the Eclipse foundation would have to comply with if they were still located in the US.

A year or so ago Github had to shut out Iranian, Syrian and Crimean developers for example.

Interesting, I hadn't thought about that.

My (limited) understanding is that US regulations are that firms that aid the government of Iran also are subject to sanction. If the move to Europe was primarily about allowing developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea to contribute, is there any threat to Eclipse's relationship with US developers?

Full disclosure - I work for the Eclipse Foundation. We are a vendor-neutral, membership-led organization with global reach. The primary motivations for this move were that ⅔’s of our members and ⅔’s of our committers were based in Europe, and we saw an opportunity to become even more relevant to our stakeholders. We think that being based in Europe will be an interesting differentiator, but we are in this to help foster worldwide collaboration, not get bogged down in politics.

> we are in this to help foster worldwide collaboration, not get bogged down in politics.

That was my point. Belgium, a famously neutral country, allows you to do that.

I'm guessing it's about avoiding US authority for at least some current or future projects under the aegis of the foundation, or allowing some members like Huawei to participate more fully.

Even if technology transfer doesn't get away from US export rules for existing US-based projects, the switch might be relevant for future donations from Huawei to Eclipse.

There should be more ethical considerations before adding such companies as "strategic members". They really shouldn't have.