Silverlight and open-source Java love has its day

Microsoft-blessed interop project delivers

Microsoft's investment in interoperability between Silverlight and open-source Java has paid off.

French IT company Soyatec has released Eclipse4SL under the Eclipse Public License 1.0 on SourceForge, and submitted it to the Eclipse Foundation as an open Eclipse project. Eclipse4SL can be found here and here.

Eclipse4SL is an open source Eclipse-based plug-in designed to help integrate Silverlight applications and content with Java web sites and services. It works with the Eclipse integrated development environment and Rich Client Platform (RCP).

Microsoft last October announced it was committing funds, architectural and technical guidance, along with project management to help Soyatec to deliver Eclipse4SL. Soyatec is a member of the open-source Java tools and runtime foundation Eclipse.

Eclipse4SL is the second Eclipse project that Microsoft has invested in, following the Standard Widget Toolkit project last March, and comes as Eclipse prepares to hold its annual developer conference in Santa Clara, California.

Microsoft is due to make its second appearance at EclipseCon this year. Visual Studio platform principal development manager Tim Wagner is scheduled to speak at this month's event, following in the footsteps of the director of Microsoft's open-source development lab Sam Ramji, who announced the plan to support SWT in 2008. ®