
Home Page: http://www.eclipse.org
Eclipse began life as a $40 million dollars worth of code contributed by IBM™ to the FOSS community, whose projects are focused on building an extensible development platform, runtimes and application frameworks for building, deploying and managing software across the entire software lifecycle. Many people know Eclipse as a Java IDE but it is much more than that. The Eclipse open source community has over 60 open source projects.
These projects can be conceptually organized into seven different "pillars" or categories:
Enterprise Development
Embedded and Device Development
Rich Client Platform
Rich Internet Applications
Application Frameworks
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
Note
Eclipse is licensed under the EPL v1.0, which is not compatible with the GPL™, and a work created by combining a work licensed under the GPL™ with a work licensed under the EPL™ cannot be lawfully distributed. The GPL™ requires that "[any distributed work] that ... contains or is derived from the [GPL™-licensed] Program ... be licensed as a whole ... under the terms of [the GPL™].", and that the distributor not "impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted". The EPL™, however, requires that anyone distributing the work grant every recipient a license to any patents they might hold that cover the modifications they have made. Because this is a "further restriction" on the recipients, distribution of such a combined work does not satisfy the GPL™. The EPL™, in addition, contains a patent retaliation clause, which is incompatible with the GPL™ for the same reasons.
The Eclipse community is also supported by a large and vibrant ecosystem of major IT solution providers, innovative start-ups, universities, research institutions, and individuals that extend, support, and complement the Eclipse Platform.