When I start Eclipse I see copyright notices from IBM and/or other companies. How can it be open source software if it is copyright IBM?
You might want to do some background reading on copyright law or consult a lawyer. “Open source” doesn’t mean that the code does not have a copyright holder. All code has an author and that person is the copyright holder or owner unless the copyright is assigned to another party. In the case of the Eclipse Project, the initial code base was contributed by IBM. Over time, Eclipse Foundation projects have become populated with code provided by many different contributors and as result, different portions of the code have different copyright holders. Licenses such as the CPL and EPL grant you a copyright license (subject to certain terms and conditions) and that is how you receive copyright rights to use, modify, redistribute, etc. the content. Although you may receive copyright rights through the CPL, EPL, or another license, it still doesn’t change who the copyright holders are for various portions of the content.
