Growth in the Eclipse Foundation, measured by the number of new projects under development, increase in membership, and outside adoption of the Eclipse platform and IDE, has increased greatly, the Foundation jhas announced. Membership has risen over 30 percent; along with the number of companies - now totaling 18 - that have adopted Eclipse's Platform and IDE as their principal commercial developer tools solution. The number of new Eclipse projects also rose to nine, it was further reported.

Those organizations that most recently became Eclipse members include Actuate Corporation; Acucorp Inc.; Agitar Software; Aonix; Compuware Corporation; Communications and Media Arts (CMA); Eclipse PlugIn Central (EPIC); JBoss Inc.; Kinzan Inc.; M1 Global Solution; Mentor Graphics; Panscopic; PureEdge Solutions, Inc.; Real-Time Innovations, Inc.; Social Physics; Softlanding Systems Inc.; and The Thales Group.

These bodies will provide resources to fortify Eclipse. The more resources the Foundation has to work with, the greater the likelihood of new product development initiatives as well.

Paul Clenahan, vice president of product management at Actuate Corporation, provided a rationale for the company's decision to seek membership. "Actuate joined Eclipse as a Strategic Developer because it makes good business sense," he said. "Our leadership in the Eclipse open source project is important to expanding our markets. Being a member of the Eclipse Board of Directors increases Actuate's visibility and influence within the Eclipse community."

As Eclipse enjoys wider implementation, support for the platform will be stronger, and projects can be developed and executed with greater agility and speed. As it stands, three new top-level Eclipse projects have been created because of industry involvement throughout many sectors. These projects include the Test and Performance Tools Project, the Business Intelligence and Reporting Project (BIRT) and the Web Tools Project.

There are a number of other subprojects that are created, as larger projects branch out. Eclipse now has 34 subprojects that combined constitute the six new Technology projects making their way in Eclipse. These include, Concern Manipulation Environment (CME), Eclipse Communications Project, Embedded Rich Client Platform (eRCP), Pollinate, Open Modeling Environment with Links for Extensions and Transformations (OMELET), and the Voice Tools Project.

Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, said, "We are very pleased with the growth in the Eclipse community. "In addition to the number of new projects under development, those companies that have adopted the Eclipse platform and IDE can be considered part of Eclipse's constituency."

These companies, the Foundation said, include Exadel Struts Studio and JSF Studio, Genuitec MyEclipse IBM WebSphere Studio, M7 NitroX, Intel C++ Compiler for Linux, Kinzan Studio, Mentor Graphics Nucleus Edge, Monta Vista Dev Rocket, Novell/SuSE SDK, PalmOS Dev Suite, Parasoft JTest, PureEdge Designer, QNX Momentics, Red Hat Developer Suite, SAP NetWeaver Studio, Tensilica Xtensa, Xplorer IDE, TimeSys TimeStorm IDE, and Wind River Workbench.

Milinkovich commented, "The new members and projects demonstrate the tremendous amount of innovation and advancement within the Eclipse technology. This in turn provides the value and technology required for widespread adoption of Eclipse in the IT industry."