John Graham, PMC for the Eclipse DTP project makes an interesting post about two groups within the Eclipse stakeholder community - "the extender and user groups. The extenders are more interested in the frameworks typically, and in fact might not want to see strong exemplary tools, since that is one area in which they'd like to make money. Users want to use Eclipse to perform some other task, such as developing enterprise or RCP applications. One looks inward to Eclipse and builds on it, and the other looks outward from Eclipse and builds with it."

According to John, "both are valid positions, but the framework centric one has tended to dominate more (notice that the framework comments come from the bylaws, whereas the tooling comments come from the development process guidelines)." Ultimately, as he sums up, "the challenge is to recognize the multiple stakeholder voices in the Eclipse community and strike a balance."