Both BEA and Sybase have joined as "strategic developers" and will have seats on the board of Eclipse.
The Eclipse Foundation guides the development of a number of projects around the Eclipse software, which provides a "framework," or foundation, for plugging several programming tools into a single application. The foundation was started by IBM and has enjoyed a surge in membership and usage among developers over the past two years.
BEA said the next version of its Java development tool, called WebLogic Workshop, will be based on the Eclipse software, which means that Eclipse-compatible tools will work with Workshop. BEA will also take the lead in the Eclipse Web tools platform project, a first version of which will ship this summer.
BEA has a substantial following of Java programmers--its Dev2dev developer network has about a million members--and it has been influential in the creation of industry-wide Java and Web services specifications.
Officials at the company could not answer specific questions on why the company chose the Eclipse platform and not the rival Java framework, called NetBeans.
However, BEA will be working closely with the developer community to iron out possible migration problems, such as code re-writes and incompatibilities according to director of technology at BEA, Michael Smith.
"The goal is to preserve the programming framework, productivity innovations and BEA WebLogic Platform functionality that exists in Workshop while allowing the developer to use the leading open development tool - Eclipse. We plan on having a preview release of the technology this [northern hemisphere] summer and will be able to address the packaging and migration at that time."
Developers will be able to leverage Workshop features but at the same time take advantage of a high quality tooling framework and a wealth of additional Eclipse plug-ins," Smith added.
In one of its first moves in open-source development, BEA last year started a project called Beehive within Eclipse. Beehive provides tools to quickly build Java server applications using prebuilt software components.
Until now, BEA had resisted calls to join Eclipse because of a view that IBM's initial sponsorship of the project could mean undue influence for Big Blue. But the growth in usage of Eclipse software, combined with the fact that IBM spun off Eclipse as an independent foundation last year, led BEA to reconsider, said Bill Roth, vice president of product marketing at BEA.
"BEA's joining of Eclipse ratifies the notion that Eclipse is a broad industry community," Roth said. "The Eclipse Foundation has evolved to the point where, frankly, it's clear it's no longer just an IBM initiative."
Sybase, meanwhile, has been a member of Eclipse since 2002 but is stepping up its commitment and will become a board member. Sybase is also proposing a project called Data Tools Project for database management tools, where it will be the lead developer.
Brendon Chase contributed to this report.
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