We are getting some really good feedback on Nokia joining Eclipse and proposing to lead a J2ME project at Eclipse. For me the announcement is great news for two reasons: 1) to date Eclipse did not have a strong platform for mobile development, now we will have one, and 2) Nokia wants to lead the effort and bring with it Nokia developers, code and 2 million developers on Forum Nokia. I hope we will also see some other major players in the mobile space join the effort. Pretty exciting stuff!
James Governor also makes the insightful point that this announcement is another perfect example of the Eclipse community being a platform for participation. Nokia is committed to engaging the mobile community for developing an open mobile tools platform. Similar to what is happening with the Eclipse Web Tools Platform project being lead by BEA, but includes participation from JBoss, IBM, Borland, ObjectWeb and others. Or how about the recently proposed BPEL Designer project that is proposed to be co-led by Oracle and IBM. All companies that compete in the commercial marketplace but participating together in an open source community to develop a common platform.
