Javalobby newsletter: http://www.javalobby.org/nl/archive/jlnews_20040203o.html with a guest editorial from Jochen Krause, a countryman of mine.
Good article IMHO. I’m on edge now for a “thoughtful, opposing point of view”.
PS: I am no Eclipse user. And please…: no flame-wars about Eclipse or Netbeans or Insert-your-fav-IDE-here. 
I can’t believe you would even suggest that Sun join Eclipse when eveyone knows that Insert-your-fav-IDE-here is far superior!
Sheesh
I rather hope they don’t join Eclipse. Competition is the mother of invention.
Cas 
Is Eclipse really “just” an IDE - or is it a tool’s platform which can be an IDE ?
For example. Borland produces a nice IDE and are in the Eclipse consortium.
Another example: would it be nice to plugin some Eclipse tools into your favourite IDE? Maybe there could be some API cooperation or whatever.
Btw. James Ghosling (sp?) likes BlueJ he said recently. Anybody using it?
Didn’t Sun invite Eclipse to cooperate with them a couple of weeks ago? :
[quote]Is Eclipse really “just” an IDE - or is it a tool’s platform which can be an IDE ?
…
Maybe there could be some API cooperation or whatever.
[/quote]
When Eclipse 3.0 comes out the “Rich Client Platform” project will be done and Eclipse will truly be able to be anything. Anything with an SWT workspace window. Another big feature of Eclipse 3.0 will be the ability to place SWING widgets on SWT windows. That should be huge for people trying to migrate their tools quickly.
Sun’s big sticking point (outside of pride?), as I understand, is all the work and extensions they put in NetBeans for J2EE and only they know how hard it would be to migrate. Last I heard they declined the invitation, but then opened up talks again soon after.
I think they should join, but it will either take away resources from their NetBeans team or force them to add new people … oh I dunno. I’d like to see them join.
I think they should work together with Eclipse to work on a common base so that they become compatible, but I would hate to see Netbeans dissapear, because even the world of IDE’s needs competition