In conclusion to months of negotiations and meetings, Eclipse.org has finally announced that Microsoft will be purchasing the Eclipse project in its entirety as of June 11 ^th , 2007. According to Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation:

We at the Eclipse Foundation are always on the look-out for ways to improve penetration and increase Eclipse's effectiveness as a product. We believe that we've reached the full extent of what any project can accomplish within the confines of Open Source. As of April 1 ^st , we will begin transitioning our entire code base from the EPL to a closed-source license which Microsoft Corporation is presently drafting for us. Once this transition is complete, we will transfer ownership and hosting of the Eclipse project to Microsoft. We believe that this is the best step possible for our users and for our developers.

Microsoft declined to comment when I contacted them. However, the fact that they are buying Eclipse seems to indicate that they are branching out a little bit into more of the generalized tool sector. Perhaps we'll see a port of OSGi to .NET in the near future? I was made aware of the fact that the new port of SWT to the Windows Presentation Framework has been instigated and almost solely funded by Microsoft in preparation for the hand-off.

One little tidbit I was able to dredge up is that this is by no means a sign that Microsoft is abandoning VisualStudio.NET. Rather, the Eclipse platform will be partially rewritten in C# (to discourage future Open Source contributions) and integrated into VisualStudio. Rumor has it that this new platform will be christened "MS Visual E".

However, not all of the community seems to be taking this news very well. Steve Northover, the father of SWT, made a few suggestions to the executives about where the deal would be more appropriately fitted before storming out of the meeting on the way to his new position at Sun Microsystems. Apparently he'll be working as an intern on the NetBeans project, writing Swing javadoc.

Regarding the rest of the Eclipse user base, the Eclipse Foundation has stated that they are very interesting in any concerns or comments the community may have. As a gesture of friendship and a sign of how future relations between Microsoft and the Eclipse Foundation will be, Microsoft has established a toll-free hotline (staffed by their excellent technical support staff) which should be used to communicate with the Eclipse Foundation from now on. This number will be released along with the rest of the information regarding the transaction at an unspecified date. In the mean time, a wiki page has been created to host what little information has leaked into the community sector.

For the moment, the Europa release schedule is being suspended, as it would be terribly inconvenient to have a major release right in the middle of a transition of this magnitude. All Europa release-train projects are being temporarily closed (at the CVS level) and their developers are being invited to "seek part-time employment" until Microsoft is ready to resume development on the platform, presumably sometime next year. (though, after Vista, who knows what "sometime next year" really means?)

In conclusion, we should see some interesting changes in the coming months. Let's just hope Microsoft is as skillful in the next few years managing Eclipse as it has been with all of its acquisitions in the past. If we're lucky, we may even be allowed to look at a solar-lunar occult in two or three years without getting a cease and desist for unauthorized use of a trademarked brand. Only time will tell.