Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Eclipse director still eyes Sun

news
May 9, 20072 mins

Despite what some might believe, Sun Microsystems would not have to dump its NetBeans open source tools platform if the company ever joined the rival Eclipse Foundation, Eclipse Executive Director Mike Milinkovich said on Tuesday.

Interviewed at the JavaOne conference, Milinkovich disagreed with a report that said Sun would be forced to halt NetBeans as a condition of Eclipse participation. This notion, he said, is “just utter hogwash.”

“We would love to have Sun join. There’s no reason they can’t join. The door’s certainly always open,” Milinkovich said. Right now, however, there are no active discussions with Sun about Sun climbing aboard, he said.

Sun already offers an Eclipse plug-in enabling development for the Sun GlassFish application server via the Eclipse IDE, Milinkovich said.

Two Sun officials, Tim Bray, Sun director of Web technologies, and Rich Green, executive vice president for software, both declined to comment Monday on whether Sun would be joining Eclipse.

In another development, the Eclipse Foundation is on course to ship its multi-project Europa release in June, Milinkovich said.

The 23-project package features more than double the number of projects in last year’s 10-project Callisto release. To keep developers working on the same level with its technologies, Eclipse offers a single, uniform release of projects.

Part of the Europa release is the Dynamic Languages Toolkit, featuring support for dynamic languages, Milinkovich said.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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