Eclipse was an IBM idea – a kind of universal tool platform – an open extensible IDE for anything and nothing in particular.

That’s the intro on the Eclipse page here.

In more detail, it’s, "the real vision of eclipse as an industry platform is only realized if … tools from different tool builders can be combined together by users to suit their unique requirements, in ways that the tool builders never even imagined. The mission of the Eclipse Project is to adapt and evolve the Eclipse Platform and associated tools to meet the needs of the tool building community and its users, so that the vision of eclipse as an industry platform is realized."

Now, however, it’s being spun out from IBM into a nonprofit organization with a new board of directors and a new governance model designed to encourage other industry players to get involved in the project, says an IDG News Service report here, going on:

"As part of the restructuring, Skip McGaughey, the IBM staffer who is the consortium’s current executive director, will step down from his position. The newly formed Eclipse board will select a new executive director – one who is not from IBM – within the next few weeks, McGaughey said."

IBM will no longer be the primary financial contributor and will instead receive contributions from commercial members who’ll each provide between $5,000 and $250,000 in funding per year, and who also will begin contributing more developer resources to the project, the story quotes McGaughey as saying.

"IBM expects to provide ‘less than one eighth’ of Eclipse’s funding for 2004, McGaughey said. He declined to say how that compares to 2003, but said IBM historically has been the ‘primary contributor’.

"IBM launched the Eclipse project two years ago, hoping that it will form the basis of an industry standard, open-source Java development platform. IBM has succeeded in encouraging vendors such as Borland Software Corp., Oracle Corp, and SAP AG to build their software on top of Eclipse, but has so far been unable to entice BEA Systems Inc. or Sun Microsystems Inc. into the fold.

"Sun flirted with the idea of joining the consortium last year but dropped out of negotiations in December, saying it had been unable to reach agreeable terms with the Eclipse board."

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2004 at 10:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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