Eclipse rises victorious

Source: Computerworld

Summary:

Although it began as an IBM endeavor in 2001, the Eclipse open source tools platform has come into its own, emerging as both an alternative to Microsoft in the application development space and the de facto standard for developing in Java.

Overtaking Sun Microsystems' rival NetBeans open source platform, Eclipse is expanding the depth of technologies it is pursuing and its membership numbers. Key to attracting wider vendor involvement across the Java space, Eclipse was spun out of IBM in 2004 and is now under the jurisdiction of the not-for-profit Eclipse Foundation, which has gathered the backing of BEA Systems and Borland Software.

"Some of IBM's fiercest competitors are strategic members that sit on our board of directors," said Ian Skerrett, Eclipse director of marketing.

In fact, BEA, not IBM, took the lead on the Eclipse Web Tools Platform, released last month, Skerrett noted.

"You wouldn't see so many vendors flocking to support [Eclipse] if they were still concerned that IBM still dominates Eclipse," said Carl Zetie, analyst at Forrester Research.