In this interview, Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, looks at some of the new features in the Eclipse 3.1 development platform, including Web services support in the Web tools project. He discusses the impact Eclipse is having on the tooling market, dispels misconceptions around open source culture and describes the profile of a typical Eclipse project committer.

From the interview:

How is Eclipse changing the dynamics of the tooling market?

Mike Milinkovich: What's happening in the market is that you're seeing the emergence of two tools ecosystems. One is Microsoft's and the other is Eclipse's. Additionally, there are lots of tools that are being built on Eclipse that are not Java. In addition to the Java tools, you can see that Borland's Together [Control] Center is built with Eclipse and, of course, the Rational tools are built on Eclipse. So Eclipse is very strong in modeling. You can also see that Eclipse is very strong in embedded C or C++ development. We're trying to build a tooling platform that a large number of vendors can coalesce around. The advantage to developers is that you get a platform with investment being shared by many companies. That means that lots of cool technology is being based on Eclipse.

Read Milinkovich on Eclipse 3.1, open source development

I personally feel that intelliJ is lot better for J2EE development.

I personally feel that intelliJ is lot better for J2EE development.

+1

I personally feel that intelliJ is lot better for J2EE development.

+1

-1. IntelliJ is not free.

I personally feel that intelliJ is lot better for J2EE development.

+1

+1

I personally feel that intelliJ is lot better for J2EE development.

+1

+1
Where are the JBuilder, JDeveloper and NetBean defenders? Would you raise you hand please?

Look like TSS is triggering a move by either Sun or Oracle or both to buy out JetBrain. :-)

You'd be right, but you might not be right this time next year, or even in 6 months.

I personally feel that intelliJ is lot better for J2EE development.

As long as you are ready to back your preferences with cash,
IntelliJ is fine. :))

Im sorry but IBM owns eclipse end of story.

Theres lots of "plugin" cooperation, but thats the end of it. Eclipse is the maturation of IBMs Visual Age for Java + integration with everything IBM has in its enterprise integration bag in most of its "for pay" versions.

But hey we all knew that right?

But lets be honest its NOT open source in the way Apache and JBoss are. Its not even that great of a Java tool when it comes to large projects. It works well with small projects.

Its a renegade as far as "Java" is concerned and given the horrible behavior of RAD, WSAD and Rational XDE, Eclipse is definitely getting a black eye in enterprise development.

I dont see the concern really, I think Eclipse is really more dependent on Java succeeding than vice versa. And Java has succeeded already in all areas.

The myth of open source is that it will somehow devour new products because the contributions of so many developers over time leads to commoditization.

Eclipse will eventually be devoured by someone who actually does it right and geez they might just charge for it!

Dont forget tommorow.

Im sorry but IBM owns eclipse end of story.Theres lots of "plugin" cooperation, but thats the end of it. Eclipse is the maturation of IBMs Visual Age for Java + integration with everything IBM has in its enterprise integration bag in most of its "for pay" versions.But hey we all knew that right?But lets be honest its NOT open source in the way Apache and JBoss are. Its not even that great of a Java tool when it comes to large projects. It works well with small projects.Its a renegade as far as "Java" is concerned and given the horrible behavior of RAD, WSAD and Rational XDE, Eclipse is definitely getting a black eye in enterprise development.I dont see the concern really, I think Eclipse is really more dependent on Java succeeding than vice versa. And Java has succeeded already in all areas. The myth of open source is that it will somehow devour new products because the contributions of so many developers over time leads to commoditization.

Eclipse will eventually be devoured by someone who actually does it right and geez they might just charge for it!Dont forget tommorow.

I would have to disagree on the "renegade" statement about eclipse. I started using eclipse back in 2002. I like the eclipse infrastructure and I've written plugins for eclipse, so I'm definitely bias. Prior to using eclpse, I used JBuilder. The appeal of eclipse for me is that I can write a plugin and have it work. I can also take advantage of other plugins and reduce the amount of work for myself.

The developers of eclipse go back quite a few years and have a ton of experience building IDE. Looking at the design and implementation of eclipse, I would say the foundation is solid. Having read through quite a bit of eclipse code, the quality is pretty high. Compared to the commercial code I've seen over the last 8-10 years, I would argue eclipse code is exceptional. Either that, or I've been unlucky and have been subjected to some really god aweful commercial code. I'm sure things will change, but I really doubt someone can revolutionize IDE design and implementation in the next decade. In 20-30 years, it might be possible and I hope something better replaces eclipse. For now, eclipse is pretty damn good. I'd gladly pay a license for eclipse, but luckily, I don't have to.

peter

I think you are little frustrated.....
and you do not know much about open source either...

Im sorry but IBM owns eclipse end of story.

You do not understand "open source" ?
It has nothing to do with who owns license.
It has nothing to do with free or paid software.
Open source means anyone can freely get the source code.

From what i see Eclipse is no different than JBOSS.
Both are owned by commercial company.
Both are developed by employees of commercial company.
Both have restricted and controlled access to changing code.
Both are free to use, and free to download the code.

Im sorry but IBM owns eclipse end of story.

You do not understand "open source" ?It has nothing to do with who owns license.It has nothing to do with free or paid software.Open source means anyone can freely get the source code.From what i see Eclipse is no different than JBOSS.Both are owned by commercial company.Both are developed by employees of commercial company.Both have restricted and controlled access to changing code.Both are free to use, and free to download the code.

The ability to freely download source code is nice in principle, but for the average developer or software company it is totally irrelevant for a project the size of Eclipse, as they don't have the time or resources to handle the source code such a project. What matters is support.

The ability to freely download source code is nice in principle, but for the average developer or software company it is totally irrelevant for a project the size of Eclipse, as they don't have the time or resources to handle the source code such a project. What matters is support.

We were talking about description of opensource.

You can say same thing for Linux, yet you see hunders of distributions of linux created solely because source code was avail.

And availability of Eclipse source code is not irrelevant for companies like Borland who anounced migrating their products to Eclipse platform.

We were talking about description of opensource.You can say same thing for Linux, yet you see hunders of distributions of linux created solely because source code was avail.And availability of Eclipse source code is not irrelevant for companies like Borland who anounced migrating their products to Eclipse platform.

Were you? Not so sure. Essentially Eclipse is and has been IBMs (successful) attempt to utterly destroy the IDE market. After two appaling(!) version they got it right the third time. So you might get the idea of the amount of money IBM poured into the project. Eclipse has pretty ruthlessly harvested several ideas and concepts from the closed source market, in particular from the (still superior) IntelliJ. One can of course argue that IntelliJ is not for free, but in the end I do care if it is *honestly priced* much more than if its free (as in freedom of speech).

Actually what most people really want is the "free lunch" as Jonathan Schwartz has realistically captured in his JavaOne keynote.

On the other hand, if Eclipse would serve us nothing but saving us from embarassing excuses for editors in future commercial ides that would be something - the twist is you could have that with EMACS ca. 15 years ago.

Eclipse has pretty ruthlessly harvested several ideas and concepts from the closed source market, in particular from the (still superior) IntelliJ.

I don't think this is entirely fair. Eclipse was pretty much based on its predecessor - VisualAge for Java, which in turn was based on VisualAge Smalltalk.

I don't think this is entirely fair. Eclipse was pretty much based on its predecessor - VisualAge for Java, which in turn was based on VisualAge Smalltalk.

Absolutely, but I rarely see anyone use the SmallTalk-80 like browser anymore. Where it is based (at least in concept) on VA is with incremental compilation, Smalltalk like navigation etc. Where it has copied (imho) from eclipse is in the excellent integration of shortcuts and in particular in refactoring. Both now make it a very good Java IDE, no doubt at all.

I don't think this is entirely fair. Eclipse was pretty much based on its predecessor - VisualAge for Java, which in turn was based on VisualAge Smalltalk.

Absolutely, but I rarely see anyone use the SmallTalk-80 like browser anymore.

VisualAge Smalltalk was hugely in advance of Smalltalk-80, and had most of the features of Eclipse.

excellent integration of shortcuts and in particular in refactoring. Both now make it a very good Java IDE, no doubt at all.

VisualAge Java/Smalltalk had shortcuts, and their great strength was refactoring. So, I don't see how this argument holds up.

I would suggest that both Eclipse and other Java IDEs have all copied features that were present in earlier IDEs. Smalltalk has a long history of pioneering things!

The ability to freely download source code is nice in principle, but for the average developer or software company it is totally irrelevant for a project the size of Eclipse, as they don't have the time or resources to handle the source code such a project. What matters is support.

We were talking about description of opensource.

We were talking about effective ownership of a project, and whether or not a project being open source changes things. I am not saying whether or not Eclipse is 'owned' by IBM or not. What I am saying is that Eclipse being open source does not in practice affect things, as who has the resources (or motivation) to take on a project of that size?

You can say same thing for Linux, yet you see hunders of distributions of linux created solely because source code was avail.

You are confusing the ability to distribute with the issue of open source. Few of these distributions involve patching the Linux kernel, so that source code availability is largely irrelevant. And, of course, the kernel is still controlled by just a few people.

And availability of Eclipse source code is not irrelevant for companies like Borland who anounced migrating their products to Eclipse platform.

This is not relevant to the general user or developer.