Originally developed by Object Technology International (OTI) and purchased by IBM for use by internal developers
Released to open-source community in 2001, managed by consortium
Eclipse Public License (EPL)
Based on IBM Common Public License (CPL) Consortium reorganized into independent not-for-profit corporation, the Eclipse Foundation, in early 2004

What is Eclipse?
A vendor-neutral open source development platform
A universal platform for tool integration
Plug-in based framework to create, integrate and utilize software tools

Equinox
OSGi framework implementation model
Formerly known as the Open Services Gateway initiative
Standard for application lifecycle management
Provides the most fundamental Eclipse infrastructure
Plug-ins (known as a bundle)
Bundle install, update and uninstall
Bootstrap and launching
Extension registry
Introduced in Eclipse 3.0

Download pdf The Eclipse Parallel Tools Platform and Scientific Application Development