David Berlind has written a follow-up post to Sun’s JavaOne announcements regarding JavaFX. Basically noting that Sun is going head-to-head with Adobe and MS and that the battle is for RIA style applications for the mobile handset market.
David did point out one limiting factor to Sun’s potential success:
Sun has one other small fungus eating away at the Java community that may need reconciliation before it can battle Adobe and Microsoft at full strength: the religious division amongst Java developers that’s expressed through their loyalties to either the Eclipse or NetBeans integrated development environments.
Hmmm, a small fungi? I’ve must say I have never seen Eclipse described as a mushroom. According to wikipedia, over 90% of all plant species engage in some kind of mycorrhizal relationship with fungi and are dependent upon this relationship for survival, so I guess David thinks Eclipse is important for Sun’s chance of success in the mobile space. 
The weird thing is that Jonathan Schwartz still wants to drive a wedge between Eclipse and NetBeans. Jonathan has suggested David run a poll to see which IDE is most popular for mobile development, suggesting a potential resurgence of NetBeans. Oh please, I hope this doesn’t mean we are about to experience another round of NetBeans FUD.
IMHO, Eclipse is very well positioned in the mobile and RIA space. Nokia, Motorola, Symbian, Adobe and others are all basing their tools on Eclipse. Eclipse is enabling a wider ecosystem of mobile development, far beyond one that is controlled by Sun.
