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Getting Rational About Eclipse
As the Eclipse Foundation wraps up its big conference, IBM Rational's CTO Lee Nackman reflects on the platform's growth and achievements, SOA, and modeling
by the Editors of Java Pro
March 9, 2005
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Lee Nackman
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The growth of the Eclipse tools platform was underscored by attendees of EclipseCon 2005, a sold-out conference held at the Hyatt Regency in Burlingame, California, in early March. The event coincided with the first year of the Eclipse Foundation's existence, and to explore its evolution and progress, Java Pro editors talked with Lee Nackman, Ph.D, vice president of design, construction, and test tools development and CTO of Rational Software at IBM Software Group, who’s been involved with Eclipse from the start.
Java Pro: You’ve been involved with Eclipse from the beginning. Did you help write it?
Lee Nackman: I didn't help write it. I was in technical management at IBM, and I was responsible for IBM's tool products back in the late nineties. We recognized that there was a need to have a common platform for solving some IBM product problems, but as we went further we realized this was an industry problem, and we had to build an ecosystem. We decided that open source was the way to build an ecosystem around this technology. That's why we put it out in open source, and then we did a lot of things to encourage the growth, culminating last year in creating the independent, not-for-profit foundation—the Eclipse Foundation. Things have just taken off. The technology is very strong, and I think the environment for building the community is very strong.
JP: Eclipse's growth is incredible, and that seems to be reflected at EclipseCon 2005.
Nackman: The growth of Eclipse has just been phenomenal. Even more exciting is the fact that Eclipse has become the tools platform that everybody wants to be on. We're seeing all of the major tools vendors in Eclipse; we're seeing all of the major platform vendors committed to Eclipse. The growth is astounding and very exciting.
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