IBM-Led Eclipse Open Source Tools Consortium To Gain IndependenceIBM-Led Eclipse Open Source Tools Consortium To Gain Independence

The IBM-led Eclipse open-source consortium plans to transition to an independent nonprofit organization, a move slated be unveiled Feb. 3 at the first annual EclipseCon show in Anaheim, Calif.

Currently directed and funded primarily by IBM, the group will become the Eclipse Foundation and have its own full-time management staff and board of directors, said Ski McGaughey, Eclipse's current chairman and an IBM employee. The Eclipse consortium has filed papers to be legally incorporated in Delaware, a process expected to be finalized soon, he said.

McGaughey will help Eclipse transition to new leadership under an executive director, who will be named sometime after the Feb. 3 announcement. He said individuals from four companies are being considered for the position, but he declined to elaborate.

The executive director will answer to the Eclipse Foundation board, which will consist of executives from Eclipse member companies. The board members will be announced Feb. 3, McGaughey said. He declined to specify how many directors would be on the board.

Plans call for the new Eclipse organization to have several membership tiers. At the highest level will be strategic commercial companies that contribute funds and resources to Eclipse. Those companies also will make up the board. Other membership categories include individual developers called "committers," which are authorized to contribute code to the Eclipse open-source integrated development environment (IDE); associate members such as open-source consortia, academic institutions and research organizations; and commercial companies that provide plug-ins to the Eclipse IDE, McGaughey said.

Associate members and committers can join the Eclipse Foundation for free. Plug-in providers must pay an annual fee of $5,000 to join the foundation, and board member companies must contribute financially, with development activities depending on their individual contributions to the foundation's work, McGaughey said. Many of the 48 Eclipse member companies would likely fall into the associate or plug-in company categories of membership, he added.

IBM formed Eclipse in November 2001 to provide a standard IDE for using multiple tools from different vendors simultaneously, an effort to solve compatibility problems between different vendors' Java tools. Any tools vendor can download Eclipse for free and create plug-ins to the framework that allow their tools to work seamlessly within the IDE.

Thousands of plug-ins to Eclipse are available now, and the IDE has been downloaded about 18 million times by 475,000 organizations, McGaughey said.

Though many of the leading Java software and tools vendors--such as Oracle, BEA Systems and IBM--are Eclipse members, Sun Microsystems has opted not to join because of its long-standing power struggle with IBM over the control of Java.

Two weeks ago, Sun and a group of vendors--including some Eclipse supporters--formed the Java Tools Community (JTC), an effort aimed at providing standards for interoperability between Java tools. The JTC will work in conjunction with the Java Community Process (JCP). Supervised by Sun, the JCP creates Java standards.

A Sun spokeswoman declined to comment on whether Sun would join the Eclipse Foundation now that IBM has spun off the effort. But she said there are "many constructive conversations" occurring between Sun executives and the group about the matter.

Rikki Kirzner, an analyst at research firm IDC, said it's highly unlikely that Sun will join Eclipse, regardless of the degree of IBM's involvement.

"Sun's not going to do anything with Eclipse," Kirzner said. "They see [Eclipse] as a personal affront and formed the JTC as a countermeasure."

Sun or no Sun, an independent Eclipse will ultimately benefit the Java community as a whole, Kirzner said. And while it's a "shame" Sun went its own way to form the JTC, that group's efforts also should have a positive effect on the Java community, she said.

Any attempt to try to unify the myriad Java tools on the market on an integrated platform will help the industry, Kirzner noted. "This is really important when you're going against Microsoft," she said.