An editor's work is never done... we're constantly going around fixing things, especially written things, around us. My wife once lamented that if I owned a red pen, every magazine and newspaper in the house would be awash in a sea of crimson ink.
Part of that drive involves adding new content to LDN, which is an ongoing mission, since there's a lot of content to be had. In the next few days, I'll be shifting some key articles and tutorials about the Eclipse plug-in for the Linux Standard Base from one of our workgroup sites into the LSB section here on LDN. It's a very handy tool for you developers that like Eclipse, so it's good to get that highlighted front and center.
But there's some misinformation about Eclipse on LDN now that I actually need to correct right now. And, wouldn't you know, it was me that got the info wrong.
Last week, when I was exploring the reasons why Linux development doesn't have a strong IDE presence, I used Eclipse as one (of many) example of an IDE that has some inroads in the Linux development community. But, hearkening back to the days when I was a wet-behind-the-ears reporter, I mistakenly wrote Eclipse belonged to IBM.
As Ian Skerrett, Director of Marketing from the Eclipse Foundation, pointed out in a tweet earlier this week, that is incorrect. I remember the The Eclipse Project being launched by IBM back in 2001, amid a bunch of hoopla during that year's LinuxWorld at the Javits Center in New York City. But even that memory is not quite correct. According to the Eclipse Foundation's own history:
"Industry leaders Borland, IBM, MERANT, QNX Software Systems, Rational Software, Red Hat, SuSE, TogetherSoft and Webgain formed the initial eclipse.org Board of Stewards in November 2001. By the end of 2003, this initial consortium had grown to over 80 members."On Feb 2, 2004 the Eclipse Board of Stewards announced Eclipse’s reorganization into a not-for-profit corporation. Originally a consortium that formed when IBM released the Eclipse Platform into Open Source, Eclipse became an independent body that will drive the platform’s evolution to benefit the providers of software development offerings and end-users. All technology and source code provided to and developed by this fast-growing community is made available royalty-free via the Eclipse Public License."
Like our own Linux Foundation, the Eclipse Foundation can be summed up as a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion and support of its main focus--in their case, the Eclipse Project. Actually, unlike Linux, which is maintained by individuals and companies, the Eclipse projects are actually hosted by the Eclipse Foundation, which maintains the technology infrastructure for the projects.
Associations like this are very hard to break. Because of IBM's strong marketing push back at the turn of the century, and its continued support--particularly on its developerWorks site--IBM is still often perceived as the owners of Eclipse, when now they are are just one of 157 listed members of the Eclipse Foundation. And, though it seems lost to history, there were never the sole owners of the project--it was always part of a consortium.
This is an important thing to note, because there seems to be another misperception out there about Eclipse: that it's managed by corporate entities who know nothing of the needs of community-based computing. Looking at the real history, though, it's clear to me that the Eclipse project is more of an open-source community than a lot people give it credit.
