Eclipse Gains Ground

Eclipse, the open-source project that has spawned some heavy-duty software tools, is growing up. Seeded in the late 1990s with $40 million in funding from IBM, the effort has since been spun off into a standalone operation so as to quell any concerns that the group was there to do Big Blue's bidding.

Along with IBM, corporate members of Eclipse now include Linux stalwarts Red Hat and Novell, plus Hitachi, MontaVista, Oracle, TimeSys and numerous other companies.

In recent months, Eclipse has broadened its base of support even further. In early March, for example, some 1,000 software developers gathered in Burlingame, Calif., for the sold-out EclipseCon 2005 conference. The event made big news, with Borland announcing it would take an expanded role by joining Eclipse's board of directors and contributing a team of developers to help expand the project.

Computer Associates, database vendor Sybase and enterprise-infrastructure software vendor BEA also signed on to Eclipse at or just before the show.

So, what's all the fuss about? Technically speaking, Eclipse is a metaplatform--essentially, a platform that supports the development of highly integrated software tools. If that sounds a little inaccessible, it's no wonder Eclipse hasn't become more of a household name.

Put more practically, Eclipse is a tool for building other tools, such as software integrated development environments (IDEs). However, to the software developer on the street, Eclipse is usually considered a Java IDE, because that's the most mature implementation of the technology.

Eclipse 1.0 debuted in late 2001. The latest version, release 3.0.1, was unveiled last September. Offered as a free download, source code is available. The Eclipse software-development kit includes a full-featured IDE, Java development tools and an environment to develop plug-ins.

Solution providers should take note of that last feature. Though the Eclipse IDE is free, anyone can add a plug-in, or software component, on top of the basic environment. And they can charge for it.

Indeed, examples of Eclipse-based commercial products abound. Far and away the best known is IBM's WebSphere Studio. But Borland, Fujitsu, TimeSys and dozens of smaller vendors all have offerings, and Eclipse clearly constitutes an opportunity for independent software houses and solution providers.

"By every measure, Eclipse is the open-source development platform with the widest adoption," Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, tells VARBusiness. "Of course, everyone knows about its predominance in the Java space. But Eclipse is also the No. 1 development platform for embedded and Linux."

It's also important to note that despite its open-software roots, Eclipse isn't for Linux only. Versions are available for Windows, the Mac OS and several flavors of Unix, including IBM's AIX Unix, Sun's Solaris and Hewlett-Packard's HP/UX.