Has the traditional integrated development environment gone the way of the dinosaur? The company that invented the IDE seems to think so...sort of.
There seems to be a consensus among open-source technology watchers that the Eclipse platform has reached a tipping point in its evolution toward widespread industry acceptance and even popularity. The recent EclipseCon trade show offered plenty of evidence to support the idea--primarily in the form of brand-name companies either jumping on board for the first time or ratcheting up their involvement in the Eclipse Foundation.
Borland Software confirmed rumors this week that it would be upgrading its membership in the Eclipse Foundation. The Scotts Valley, CA-based toolmaker, which was one of the founding member companies of the organization, has signed on as a strategic developer and member of the board.
The number of companies jumping on the Eclipse bandwagon has been growing at a furious pace since it gained official independence from IBM last year. Twenty-six companies joined the Eclipse Foundation in 2004, bumping that organization's roster to 82 members, including strategic developers, add-in providers, and associate members.
One of the more intriguing pieces of news to come out of this week's EclipseCon 2005 conference is the Eclipse Foundation's announcement that it has completed its first-ever roadmap. The roadmap document, which the foundation plans to revise annually, is intended to provide visibility to the open-source community around Eclipse and the Eclipse ecosystem, explains Eclipse Foundation Executive Director Mike Milinkovich.
IBM seen challenging software industry with release of patents to open source community.
As promised, a week after releasing a new version of WebSphere, IBM announced a new integrated toolset that draws heavily on its Rational technology.
Finding that the majority of coders using its Java server are working with Eclipse, Systinet is coming out with a set of tools specifically designed for the popular open-source IDE.
Positioning its NetWeaver platform for enterprise Java applications, SAP plans to offer a "virtual machine container" in 2005.
Art Technology Group's Adam Belmont has spent the past year working to make it easier for Java developers to build customer-facing Web applications on IBM's WebSphere Studio platform.
IBM is donating some of its software for speech-enabling applications to two open-source organizations: the Apache Software Foundation and the Eclipse Foundation.
NetBeans is a versatile and highly configurable editor that stacks up very well against Eclipse. The key difference is that the NetBeans editor ties in well with additional functionality, such as the project manager, the GUI designer and the debugger.
The new version of Seapine Software's Surround SCM software change management product emphasizes integration with the tools and technologies development teams are using, says Rick Riccetti, president and CEO.
Actuate is joining the Eclipse Foundation as a strategic developer to spearhead the creation of business intelligence and reporting tools for the open-source Java IDE.
There will always be "some tension" in the Java Community Process (JCP), observed James Gosling, Sun's distinguished fellow and the software engineer credited with creating Java.
IBM Rational announced on Monday that it plans to standardize its suite of automated software quality (ASQ) tools around the Hyades open-source platform. Hyades is a subgroup of the Eclipse open-source project focused on providing infrastructure for test tool interoperability as well as data traceability.
The Eclipse Foundation announces the availability of the latest version of the Eclipse Platform -- Eclipse 3.0 -- which adds an enhanced version of its Java IDE, a new rich-client platform, and the integration of Java Swing with the Eclipse Standard Widget Toolkit.
In July, customers will gather at IBM's annual developer conference in Grapevine, Texas, where the fuller integration of Rational products into the IBM world will be a prime topic.
While many Java toolmakers are members of Eclipse, which bills itself as "a community committed to the implementation of a universal platform for tools integration," the newest member is also bringing Ada. Aonix, an international company with headquarters in San Diego and Paris, also makes Java tools, but it is porting its Ada95 tool suite to the Eclipse platform, said Jacques Brygier, the firm's vice president of marketing.
Mike Milinkovich is the first executive director of the newly independent Eclipse Foundation. A spokesman for the Eclipse board of directors said the body selected Milinkovich, who most recently was a vice president for technical services at Oracle Corp., for his executive leadership abilities in both the technical and business fields.