January 12, 2004 (Computerworld) --
The open-source Eclipse development framework that IBM created should have an independent, nonprofit corporation overseeing its technology direction and growth within two to three weeks, a top official said last week. Skip McGaughey, the IBM tools official who has served as the chairman of the company's Eclipse group, said he hopes to have signatures from two-thirds of the organization's members by the time of the inaugural Eclipse technical conference, scheduled for Feb. 2-5 in Anaheim, Calif. Once the signatures are obtained, the Eclipse Foundation will file articles of incorporation, he said. At that time, McGaughey will relinquish his post and be replaced by a full-time, non-IBM executive director to be elected by the new group's board. McGaughey said four candidates have been interviewed, but he declined to name them for confidentiality reasons. Although the Eclipse organization has gained considerable momentum since its creation just over two years ago, it remains unclear at what level its 49 members will participate in the new body now that many will be required to pay a steep fee. To become a board member with decision-making powers at the strategic partner level, a company must contribute two to eight developers plus a percentage of its annual revenue or a flat fee not to exceed $250,000, according to McGaughey. The annual fee is much cheaper -- $5,000 -- for "plug-in providers" building components for Eclipse, McGaughey said. And there will be no charge for individual code "committers" elected by peers, or for "associate" members such as universities, standards organizations, user groups and open-source communities, he added. Sun Microsystems late last year said it had decided not to join Eclipse at any level for the time being. Ted Farrell, chief architect and director of strategy for application development tools at Oracle, said his company is evaluating how much power it needs in order to gain benefit from Eclipse. A plug-in is available to help Eclipse users deploy to Oracle's runtime. George Paolini, vice president and general manager of Java products at Borland, said some of his company's tools plug into Eclipse, but Borland will continue to be an observer more than an active participant in the Eclipse Foundation. He said Borland views the Java Community Process that Sun established to evolve Java as "the paramount organization." One thorny issue that continues to dog Eclipse is its proprietary Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) for building graphical user interfaces -- a break from the JCP-endorsed Abstract Window Toolkit and Swing components. McGaughey said work is ongoing to allow SWT and Swing to interoperate, and he hopes the matter will be resolved in the next six months. But some users aresympathetic to IBM's plight. "If the JCP is delivering something subpar, I think it's appropriate for a vendor with a huge investment in the technology to do what they need to for their customers," said Ethan Roberts, a development architect at General Casualty Insurance Company of Wisconsin in Sun Prairie.
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