Microsoft made an announcement regarding its association with the Eclipse Foundation, which is an open source group known for its Eclipse IDE offering. The foundation also offers many other developer tools. The collaboration also implies Microsoft shaking hands with other Eclipse sponsors including Google, Novell, IBM, Debeka, and Oracle.
The announcement is a bit surprising as Microsoft offers its own IDE called Visual Studio. Moreover, Microsoft plays an active role in the Eclipse ecosystem through its Azure toolkit for Eclipse along with Java SDK for Azure which Eclipse users can utilise for building their cloud applications.
According to Microsoft’s general manager, Shanku Niyogi, “We have worked with the Eclipse Foundation for many years to improve the Java experience across our portfolio of application platform and development services, including Visual Studio Team Services and Microsoft Azure.”
The collaboration marks Microsoft strengthening its role in the open source ecosystem. Also, the company has announced that it will be open sourcing its Team Explorer Everywhere plugin for Eclipse. Microsoft will also be adding Azure IoT support to the Eclipse foundation’s Kura IoT framework and launching enhanced support for Java developers in Azure.
