The Eclipse Foundation has launched a community portal, Eclipse Plug-in Central (EPIC), to promote the adoption of Eclipse-based commercial products, complementary open source projects and Eclipse-related training, support and services. According to the foundation, the portal makes it easier than ever for developers, software vendors and enterprises to find high-quality open source and commercial plug-ins, tools and add-on services to enhance their Eclipse development. The EPIC portal will be a key part of the Eclipse Foundation's effort to promote and grow the overall Eclipse ecosystem.

EPIC was initially created in 2004 and operated by an alliance of three Eclipse Foundation member companies: Genuitec, Innoopract, and Instantiations. The three companies have contributed the existing EPIC site to the Eclipse Foundation and will remain actively involved in the development and evolution of the site, they said.

The Eclipse ecosystem is one of the largest communities of commercial vendors, open source projects, and service and education that has developed around a common integration platform. There are over 1000 different plug-ins, 950 Eclipse related projects and an estimated 200 independent software vendors (ISVs) that are using Eclipse as the platform for their commercial products. The new portal offers a central repository for this community to promote their Eclipse-based products. It will also make it easier for potential users to find Eclipse-based products, the foundation claims.

“The Eclipse ecosystem has greatly matured over the last few years, evidenced by the growing number of plug-ins and tools available,” said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. “We believe that to realize the full potential of the ecosystem, it is important that we make it more accessible to the community. Our goal with EPIC is to have it be the place for finding Eclipse related products and services.”

Jochen Krause, CEO of Innoopract, said: “The EPIC alliance was formed to facilitate the adoption of Eclipse and Eclipse plugins by the development community and has been successful in providing a reliable source of information on the ecosystem of plug-ins. A merger between EPIC and Eclipse.org will accelerate the development community’s accessibility of the Eclipse ecosystem.”

Maher Masri, president of Genuitec LLC, commented thus: "It was clear to us that the best interest of the Eclipse ecosystem is to expand community contribution toward making the new portal the quintessential source for Eclipse information. Genuitec is committed to continued contribution for the new portal."

“The EPIC portal is a key tool for Instantiations and we look forward to the Foundation taking it to the next level for the entire Eclipse Ecosystem," said Mike Taylor, president/CEO of Instantiations.