While IDE usage declines, the underlying Eclipse Platform technologies remain mature and widely deployed.
Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) and many of the components delivered through the Eclipse Simultaneous Release are embedded in a large number of commercial products, including industrial software, engineering tools, embedded platforms, and other long lived systems.
🔧 Mature technologies, widely deployed in real systems
These technologies are often deeply integrated into products with long maintenance horizons, strong stability requirements, and increasing security and compliance constraints.
This creates a growing imbalance: the platform continues to be relied upon in production, while the model (community contributors, corporate sponsors...) that historically financed its maintenance, security fixes, and coordinated releases is under pressure.
The Eclipse IDE is facing a structural shift. Its usage as a primary developer tool is steadily declining as development environments, workflows, and expectations evolve. This is not a criticism, it is an observable trend. What matters is the consequence: the historical funding and contribution model that sustained the Eclipse IDE and its underlying platform is weakening.
TL;DR
If your products rely on Eclipse Platform technologies from the Eclipse Simultaneous Release, continued usage alone will not secure their future. Active engagement is more than ever required, either through contributions, Working Group membership or direct sponsorship.
🏢 A concrete responsibility for organisations that depend on them
For organisations relying on Eclipse Platform technologies, this is a tangible sustainability and risk management issue.
If components from the Eclipse Simultaneous Release are part of your products or internal platforms, this directly impacts:
- long term maintenance and security posture
- supply chain transparency and compliance
- roadmap predictability and technical risk
The Eclipse IDE and RCP Working Group exists to provide a vendor neutral and structured framework for organisations that want to take responsibility for the technologies they depend on and contribute to their sustainability.
📜 SBOMs and the EU Cyber Resilience Act: compliance is not optional
As an illustration, among the projects delivered by the Eclipse Foundation is an open source SBOM generation tool for the Eclipse IDE and Platform projects, developed last year thanks to some funding from the Sovereign Tech Agency.
This point deserves explicit attention: from 2026 onwards, SBOMs will be a key requirement under the EU Cyber Resilience Act. For many software products, particularly in regulated or industrial contexts, producing and maintaining accurate SBOMs will no longer be optional.
Maintaining compliant SBOM tooling on RCP-based products requires sustained effort:
- alignment with evolving standards
- reliable automation in build and release pipelines
- long term maintenance and security updates
Without active support from the organisations that depend on these tools, we will not be able to maintain them at the level required for regulatory compliance.
Compliance is mandatory. Sustainability enables it.
🤝Two concrete ways to engage
If your organisation has a dependency on Eclipse Platform technologies:
- engage via the Eclipse IDE and RCP Working Group, connect with me or use https://eclipseide.org/membership/
If you are an individual or an organisation not ready for Working Group membership:
- direct sponsorship provides an immediate way to support the platform https://www.eclipse.org/sponsor/ide/
If your products rely on these technologies, now is the right time to get involved.
