Kirill Grouchnikov wrote an very interesting blog: "You say Eclipse, I say IBM". He gives some factors:
- Eclipse 3.1RC3: 219 bugs fixed, but 159 have been by IBM engineers;
- list of EMF: 877 issues, all are assigned to IBM;
- list for Hyades: 3534 issues, almost all are to IBM;
So, his conclusion is:
They can babble all they want about gazillions of members on Eclipse board, but the fact still remains - it's open source (as much as Sun's projects on java.net), but it's powered exclusively by IBM.
And he also mentioned that from 3.1M2, each milestone release and each RC release, the file size of the Eclipse-SDK is becoming bigger and bigger (from 88MB to 102MB). The 3.1RC3 is now more than 100MB. I also noticed this, but I am not surprise. Eclipse is not just an Java IDE, it is a platform, there're quite a lot plug-ins (including JDT, PDE, etc.) and the ZIPPed source code.
Kirill is an Eclipse user, "using Eclipse for 10+ hours each day for the past 2.5 years". His concern is interesting, and I also agree with him that the Eclipse should not be growing bigger and bigger. I guess Eclipse may learn something from Linux: The Linux kernel is small. But after packaged by RedHat or SuSE, the Linux distribution is very big. Leave the packaging work to other service providers, Eclipse may just provide the basic.
Reading the comments by others is another interesting thing. I do agree with some comments saying that "I think what you have uncovered is the often ignored fact that most major 'open source' projects are being developed by paid employees". Not only Eclipse, but other projects are doing the same way. For example, WTP now is mainly programming by BEA; BIRT is now mainly programming by Actuate; and others. Yes, I do believe that the major contributor is still IBM. And I am like to see IBM has so much contributions. IBM "created" Eclipse, and most of IBM's software product (WSAD, Rational, Lotus Notes) now are on Eclipse. IBM does want to contribute more, not only for Eclipse itself, but for IBM's products.
You may say IBM is dominating the Eclipse, but I won't say IBM is dominating the Eclipse Foundation. Eclipse is not a product, but a community. IBM will not and is not able to dominate a community.
Eclipse 
