What is Eclipse?

Eclipse is an open platform for tool integration built by an open community of tool providers. Operating under an open source paradigm, with a common public license that provides royalty free source code and world wide redistribution rights, the eclipse platform provides tool developers with ultimate flexibility and control over their software technology.

Eclipse has formed an independent open eco-system around royalty-free technology and a universal platform for tools integration. Eclipse based tools give developers freedom of choice in a multi-language, multi-platform, multi-vendor environment. Eclipse provides a plug-in based framework that makes it easier to create, integrate and utilize software tools, saving time and money. By collaborating and exploiting core integration technology, tool producers can leverage platform reuse and concentrate on core competencies to create new development technology. The Eclipse Platform is written in the Java language and comes with extensive plug-in construction toolkits and examples.

The Eclipse Platform is a fresh start at an open integrated development environment (IDE) system with broad commercial participation. While classic tools like Emacs and others have supported the development needs of developers worldwide, most lacked the advanced features and convenience of GUI based IDEs, as well as an easily extensible nature, available in commercial tools. With over 1200 developers from 63 countries involved in the Eclipse open source community process and with more than 150 leading software tools vendors working with it, Eclipse stands a chance to change that entirely.

Eclipse is the basis of IBM's next generation of Websphere Studio products, which is a suite of tools that encompasses all of your development needs -- Web development, enterprise-scale application development, and development for wireless devices. The Studio tools run on top of WebSphere Studio Workbench, an open, extensible, tool integration platform that lets tool builders seamlessly integrate tools and application resources across the development lifecycle. The Workbench is the foundation for IBM's next generation of application development tools.

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