I am very happy to announce that we have a new project proposal at Eclipse.
Now the fact that we have a new project proposal is not in itself very interesting. We have those all the time. What is new and interesting about this one, however, is that it is being supported by our friends at Microsoft. That’s right, Microsoft is funding our member company Soyatec to develop Eclipse tools for Silverlight. This project is not only building development tools for Silverlight, it is also focused on easing the integration of Java-based web sites and services with Silverlight applications.
Microsoft also announced further support of open source communities by funding advanced Silverlight development capabilities with the Eclipse Foundation’s integrated development environment (IDE) ….Microsoft announced plans to support additional tools for developing Silverlight applications by providing funding to Soyatec, a France-based IT solutions provider and Eclipse Foundation member, to lead a project to integrate advanced Silverlight development capabilities into the Eclipse IDE. Soyatec plans to release the project under the Eclipse Public License Version 1.0 on SourceForge and submit it to the Eclipse Foundation as an open Eclipse project….
Please check out the SLDT project proposal, and comment on the newsgroup (if it’s not up, it will be shortly). We hope to see lots of interested parties join in on the effort.
As you can imagine, there have been lots of conversations that have led to this point. Those conversations lead me to believe that at least some people at Microsoft “get it” when it comes to open source. They are looking to open source as a path to increase their revenue and drive incremental customer value by making more of their stack interoperable with other technologies. It’s not about ideology, it’s about making good business and technical decisions.
We at the Eclipse Foundation are thrilled to have Microsoft supporting open source projects here. We hope this is just the beginning of a long and beneficial relationship. We certainly look at it as a strong endorsement of Eclipse’s model of collaborative development.
