- FAQ 1: What is Eclipse?
- FAQ 2: What is the Eclipse Platform?
- FAQ 3: Where did Eclipse come from?
- FAQ 4: What is the Eclipse Foundation?
- FAQ 5: How can my users tell where Eclipse ends and a product starts?
- FAQ 6: What are Eclipse projects and technologies?
- FAQ 7: How do I propose my own project?
- FAQ 8: Who is building commercial products based on Eclipse?
- FAQ 9: What open source projects are based on Eclipse?
- FAQ 10: What academic research projects are based on Eclipse?
- FAQ 11: Who uses Eclipse in the classroom?
- FAQ 12: What is an Eclipse Innovation Grant?
- FAQ 13: What Eclipse newsgroups are available?
- FAQ 14: How do I get access to Eclipse newsgroups?
- FAQ 15: What Eclipse mailing lists are available?
- FAQ 16: What articles on Eclipse have been written?
- FAQ 17: What books have been written on Eclipse?
- FAQ 18: How do I report a bug in Eclipse?
- FAQ 19: How can I search the existing list of bugs in Eclipse?
- FAQ 20: What do I do if my feature request is ignored?
- FAQ 21: Can I get my documentation in PDF form, please?
- FAQ 22: Where do I find documentation for a given extension point?
- FAQ 23: How is Eclipse licensed?
FAQ 4: What is the Eclipse Foundation?
From a small IBM-led project, Eclipse has grown into a framework deployed by a wide assortment of commercial backers. The Eclipse Foundation is a true open source project, with a board of directors governing the direction of the core platform and an ever-growing number of technologies and projects built on it. As a completely independent organization since February 2004, the foundation has a suitably complex organizational structure and plenty of exciting legal documents that you can read at eclipse.org. Each of the more than 40 foundation members has either direct or indirect representation on the board of directors, along with two representatives from the community of Eclipse committers. Most importantly, all the member companies are following the Eclipse charter by making a commitment to release Eclipse-compatible offerings and to provide continued support for the community of users, researchers, and developers. It is remarkable how quickly Eclipse has grown from a small internal project into the enabling platform for all kinds of areas, such as application development, modeling, programming language research, and so on.