[News.eclipse.foundation] Eclipse VM

[Radu Racariu <rracaru@xxxx>]

Hi everyone,
Lately I was wondering about the future of the Eclipse platform,
community and consortium with regards to its foundation, Java the
language and the platform. I must admit I'm one of those who are really
disappointed on how Sun manages the whole Java development; still give
them some credit but is all about the future of this platform (Java) and
thats whats bothering me.

Now back to Eclipse, I think that we are in the position in which we
should seriously consider on securing the future of this wonderful
platform and community.
Securing and controlling directly the foundation of the Eclipse platform
is, in my opinion, the most strategic aspect that has to be taken in
account by the whole Eclipse community and Consortium. Not long ago, IBM
the founder and one of the most influent consortium member expressed the
willing to initiate an effort that should create an open source Java 
Platform.
Open source is the key word that represents the crucial way on which
Eclipse is build.

We have great efforts already taken place such as GNU Classpath and GNU 
GCJ, both have some astonishing progress in implementing a free and 
compatible class library and compiler for Java. Others like Kaffe have 
progressed very well also. Another important project is SwingWT, an 
effort to implement Swing API on top of SWT peers.

What Eclipse should do?
I think that it has to create and found a team dedicated on working on 
securing it's foundation. Ideally we should start by creating a project 
and proposal that will formalize this work and then evaluate the options
available already, I'm referring to GNU Classpath as it is already the 
foundation for many open source JVMs.

GNU Classpath needs the support that Eclipse could give to it and 
Eclipse should have the strategic foundation secured. As many relatively 
small OS projects it needs the marketing muscle and the resources (as in 
monetary and human) that commercial partners can offer to evolve.

On the same lines, we need to consider the other side of  the Sun :) , 
meaning Swing is and will be one of the most used Java UI API around, 
for a while ;) . We need to offer to developers an easy way to integrate 
their existing UI code on Eclipse, other that using artificial bridges 
between SWT and Swing. SwingWT should be put as top priority on the list 
as an alernative integration hub. It has a good start in that its 
already implementing a good portion of Swing and AWT APIs on top of SWT.

I'm really hopping that at least some of the things I've talked about 
are,will be considered and that IBM(as is the one who triggered this 
whole debate about OS Java), will invest in this strategic aspect.

Waiting your opinions...
Best Regards,
Radu