VTT Joins Eclipse Foundation

Eclipse is an open development platform and application framework for building software. VTT's first contribution to the Eclipse community is a tool designed for managing a software architectural knowledge base.

Eclipse represents part of the implementation process for VTT's technology policy. In order to express VTT's support to the Eclipse community, VTT has joined the Eclipse Foundation as an associate member.

VTT has recently contributed to the Eclipse ecosystem by developing a tool called “Stylebase for Eclipse”. The tool provides assistance for software architects and designers. It has been implemented as an Eclipse extension and published under the GNU General Public License, the most well-known open source software license.

Eclipse is known as the most popular open source development environment and a universal platform for tool integration. Eclipse forms an independent open eco-system around royalty-free technology. The Eclipse community has developed new features that have helped evolve the platform towards integrating not only tools but also applications and services. New features also make Eclipse a strong force in the embedded market and expands the community even further internationally. Today, Eclipse is more than “just” a development environment, it has become a powerful platform that serves the entire application life cycle.

The Eclipse Foundation is a non-profit entity formed to advance the creation, evolution, promotion, and support of Eclipse. It has a full-time management organization that works with commercial developers and consumers, academic and research institutions, standards bodies, tool interoperability groups, and individual developers. The foundation co-ordinates nine open source projects with more than 50 sub-projects.

Stylebase is a re-use repository of software architectural models and patterns. It is an important part of the quality-driven software architecture design and analysis methodology. Stylebase for Eclipse is a tool for browsing and maintaining the stylebase. It aims to improve the quality of software products by helping architects and designers in selecting models that best provide the desired quality goals.