# Eclipse Foundation Executive Director Mike Milinkovich to retire in 2027 after 22 years

> **Key takeaway:** Longtime Eclipse Foundation leader Mike Milinkovich has announced his planned 2027 retirement, triggering a Board-led search for a Europe-based successor at a time when the organization has expanded far beyond its Java IDE origins into AI, automotive, IoT, and open hardware.

**Published:** 2026-11-03T13:09:44+00:00 
**Source:** Eclipse Foundation Open Source News 
**Category:** policy-community 
**Canonical URL:** https://fosswire.org/news/eclipse-foundation-executive-director-mike-milinkovich-to-re.html 

## Summary
Mike Milinkovich, who has served as Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation since 2004, announced his intention to retire in 2027 in a blog post published November 3, 2026. The transition timing will be determined by the organization's Board of Directors, which has already established a Search Committee chaired by Florian Bankoley of Bosch Mobility to identify his successor. Milinkovich emphasized that the Foundation has undergone succession planning discussions with the Board for at least five years and is financially healthy with more than 100 employees across 15 countries.

Under Milinkovich's tenure, the Eclipse Foundation transformed from a Java developer tools consortium into a global open-source host spanning enterprise Java through Jakarta EE, the Adoptium Java runtime, Eclipse Theia IDE, Open VSX marketplace, Eclipse ThreadX real-time OS, OpenHW open hardware, and the new Sovereign AI Foundation. He has suggested the next Executive Director be based in Europe, reflecting the organization's expanded European presence and its evolution into what he described as Europe's global open source foundation.

## Organizational scope and transition mechanics
- **Succession governance:** The Board of Directors retains full authority over timing and appointment, with a Search Committee already formed and chaired by a Bosch Mobility executive, indicating member-driven governance rather than founder-centric control.
- **European strategic pivot:** Milinkovich explicitly recommended the next Executive Director be Europe-based, framing this leadership transition as potentially the final step in the Foundation's multi-year geographic reorientation toward Europe.
- **Portfolio diversification:** The Foundation's project scope now encompasses Jakarta EE (enterprise Java), Adoptium (runtimes), Eclipse Theia (cloud IDE), Open VSX (extension marketplace), Eclipse ThreadX (embedded RTOS), OpenHW (RISC-V open hardware), Eclipse SDV (automotive platform), and the Sovereign AI Foundation (AI governance).
- **Operational scale:** Staff has grown to over 100 employees across 15 countries, with industry collaborations increasing in both size and ambition, including the claimed first open-source software-defined vehicle platform nearing shipment.
- **Continuity mechanism:** Milinkovich intends to remain fully engaged until successor appointment and has proposed a subsequent part-time advisory role, with exact terms subject to Board and new Executive Director discretion.

## Why it matters
This leadership transition matters for the broader open-source ecosystem because the Eclipse Foundation hosts critical infrastructure that many enterprises and developers depend upon, including the Adoptium Temurin Java distributions and the Open VSX registry used by VS Code alternatives. The explicit push for a Europe-based successor also signals how geographic concentration of open-source governance is shifting amid regulatory and digital sovereignty pressures, potentially influencing how other global foundations structure their leadership and geographic presence in the coming years.