The Eclipse Foundation has launched a community portal to promote the adoption of  Eclipse-based commercial products, complementary  open source projects and Eclipse-related  training, support and services.  The portal, Eclipse Plug-in Central (EPIC), was developed to make it easier 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.

There are currently more than 1000 different plug-ins, 950 Eclipse related projects listed on SourceForge 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 Eclipse ecosystem has greatly matured over the last few years, evidenced by the growing number of plug-ins and tools available," said Mike Milinkovich (pictured above), 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."

"One of Innoopract's missions has been to facilitate the adoption of Eclipse and Eclipse
plugins by the development community," said Jochen Krause, CEO of Innoopract. "The EPiC alliance was formed with this goal in mind and has been successful in providing a reliable source of information on the ecosystem of plugins. A merger between EPiC and Eclipse.org will accelerate the development community's accessibility of the Eclipse ecosystem.

"Genuitec is pleased to have been part of the original launch for EPIC and are committed to
continued contribution for the new portal," said Maher Masri, President of Genuitec LLC. "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."

"Instantiations is very pleased to participate in this important donation to the Eclipse
Foundation. The EPIC portal is a key tool for us and our customers 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.


The EPIC community portal can be found at http://www.eclipseplugincentral.com/.