One thing is becoming more and more clear. Large companies that are users of Eclipse technologies are getting more and more involved directly in the building of those technologies. I’ve definitely seen this in the CDT space where probably about 1/3 of our committers are from companies like this.

One thing needs to be made clear, though. This is a gigantic shift in the tectonic plates that is the embedded software business. Supply chains are king and in the past companies relied solely on their suppliers to meet their needs and were held accountable for anything that went wrong.

With the advance of open source technologies in these companies, I’m convinced it requires a change in strategy for the suppliers. Suppliers need to be more sensitive to the aspirations of their customers in open source. I’m not sure what that means and how they need to change their practices to accommodate this change in the industry. But those that don’t change will be hurting somewhere down the road. It’s an interesting and scary time all rolled into one.