Even IBM admits it didn’t expect its Eclipse open source project for building enterprise Java tools would grow as fast as it did.
But five years after 10 curious developers downloaded projects from the Eclipse.org platform that IBM financed with $40 million worth of its own code, the integrated development environment Today, the Eclipse IDE is considered by many developers as one of the most popular IDEs. Eclipse officials recently presided over one of the most ambitious Eclipse releases in it five year history: The Callisto release, which adds up to 10 projects, more than seven million lines of project code, 260 developer committees, and 15 different ISVs. Internetnews.com recently interviewed members of the Eclipse community, including officials with IBM, BEA, Intel, Zend, Wind River, Serena and the Eclipse Foundation. The questions: what’s working, what’s not, what’s next and why they think open source Java isn’t necessarily as important as you might think. So Why Do It? So why would IBM toss in $40 million worth of software and support for an effort that, ultimately, could help its competitors? For starters, timing is everything. After the original idea behind Eclipse began in the late 1990s, the timing felt right to build an ecosystem that could actually support open standards between competing companies. Lee Nackman, vice president of product development and customer support in IBM’s Rational software division, said independence was a big theme. After all, early membership growth was encouraging, but IBM also realized at the time that plenty of people in the industry still saw it as Big Blue’s club. By January of 2004, Eclipse was re-organized as an open source foundation and an independent organization. This became a key turning point, and critical to its success, said Mike Milinkovich, executive director, Eclipse Foundation. Page 2: What Works, What Doesn’t, and What About Sun?
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Does It Really Work?
Members say Eclipse works because it provides differentiation, only with a twist.
“Eclipse allows members to focus on differentiation instead of building yet another source code editor,” Eclipse’s Milinkovich explained. “A great example is BEA’s WebLogic Workshop, SAP’s Netweaver Studio and IBM’s Rational product line. If you compare the products from those companies, they are very different. Each is focused on customer needs and yet all are sharing a common platform from Eclipse.”
Bill Roth, vice president of the workshop business unit at BEA, said using Eclipse gives the company the equivalent of an additional 200 developers. As a strategic member paying $250,000 a year to the foundation, “it pays off in spades,” he said.
For Intel’s Jonathan Khazam, vice president of the Software and Solutions Group and general manager of the platform software division, Eclipse saved Intel the expense of developing its own multi-language IDE and became a unifying force for the chipmaker’s embedded tools, and Linux tools.
“Like a number of other Eclipse adopters, our tools focus on C++, and multi-language cross-platform tools are essential for our customers,” Khazam told internetnews.com.
Embedded software vendor Wind River chimed in on the gold stars members give Eclipse for consolidation and differentiation. “Prior to Eclipse, Wind River had several IDE products built on a variety of home-grown GUI frameworks written in Java, Visual Basic, and C++,” said Doug Gaff, engineering manager at Wind River.
“Now, rather than focusing on framework maintenance and enhancements, we invest our GUI development in product-differentiating commercial features and domain-specific open source contributions.”
What’s IBM’s Gain?
No question: Eclipse helps competitors benefit from IBM’s investment and contribution.
“I would say that BEA’s move to Eclipse is the best use we can make of IBM’s research dollar,” BEA’s Bill Roth said. But IBM’s Nackman said it gets plenty out of the deal. It goes back to the original idea.
“We have established a whole ecosystem around this platform and that’s important for our overall software business.”
So What About Sun? Sun’s Java? NetBeans?
Eclipse isn’t the only open source Java IDE effort in the IT world.
Java’s creator, Sun Microsystems, also promotes a similar IDE effort called NetBeans. For some Eclipse members, however, they have basic reasons for not joining up there.
Intel’s Khazam noted that NetBeans just isn’t a viable alternative for its Java effort.
“Our first Eclipse efforts were focused on performance analyzers and C++ “More recently, we’ve spent time on Java profiling enhancements. We just don’t see NetBeans as a reasonable alternative, especially for anyone interested in developing outside of Java or for embedded applications.” That might help explain why efforts over the past five years to combine Sun’s Netbeans with Eclipse have gone nowhere (although IBM’s Nackman and the Eclipse Foundation’s Milinkovich are still holding out an olive branch to Sun). “The only reason why they haven’t merged is because Sun doesn’t want them to,” Milinkovich said. “The offer has always been there for them to come and join Eclipse.” Sun, which recently updated NetBeans to version 5.5, doesn’t appear to be in a merging mood. When asked by internetnews.com whether Sun would ever join with Eclipse, Dan Roberts, director of developer tools marketing at Sun, said Sun has “no current plans to join Eclipse today or in the future.” Plus, with all the shifts in the Java tools market, maybe the competing platforms serve a basic purpose. “The competition between the growing NetBeans ecosystem and Eclipse has made us both better, driving us to innovate faster in what has become a two horse race for Java tools and platforms,” Roberts said. This may help explain why the question over whether Java should be “fully” open-sourced could be moot. One of Sun’s key advantages with Java is that it controls Java, and works with community groups to improve the language. Although some Eclipse members are still irked by this, saying Sun uses its control of java to favor one particular set of tools or product, others say ultimately, the issue won’t matter, if current trends hold. IBM’s Nackman noted that open source java will be a good thing for the open source community if indeed it is a real open source effort. Eclipse tools already can work with multiple JVM [Java Virtual Machines], for example, said IBM’s Nackman. “From the Eclipse standpoint I don’t think where the JVM comes from is important. For the Java community as a whole having a truly open source java implementation will be a good thing.” Everyone knows that Sun is aware of current trends too, they added. “Apache Harmony is coming along very impressively. Motorola is starting a similar effort around building an Apache licensed Java ME implementation,” Milinkovich added. “I think that open source java is going to be a reality with or without them.”
