Why reinvent the wheel? The Eclipse project, an Open Source community has a new member, Nokia, who will be coming on board as a strategic developer and board member. In other words we'll help you guys with some developers and support in "other areas" to work on a MIDP authoruing tool that will be compatible with our phones (and others). Good to see a little more embracing of the Open Source Community from Nokia.

Full Press Release

Nokia joins Eclipse foundation as strategic developer and board member
September 19, 2005
Contributes J2ME Tooling to Open Source Community

Ottawa, Canada/Espoo, Finland - Nokia and the Eclipse Foundation today announced that Nokia has joined the Eclipse Foundation as a Strategic Developer and Board member. Nokia will support the work of the Eclipse open source community by contributing software and developers to a proposed new Eclipse project.

As a Strategic Developer in the Eclipse Foundation, Nokia will lead a project to create a framework for mobile Java developer tools, including complete tooling support for J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition). The project will deliver a sustainable mobile tools offering for all developers and companies who wish to create mobile Java applications and build commercial tools for Java. Nokia plans to donate several components of its existing Java development tools technology as well as actively develop new software to introduce tools for the creation of both MIDP (Mobile Information Device Profile) and CDC (Connected Device Configuration) based mobile Java applications. Furthermore, Nokia plans to use the Eclipse tools platform widely in its tools portfolio and will actively contribute to several existing Eclipse projects beyond the scope of Java.

"By working closely with Eclipse, and proposing a new open source mobile development tools project, we will provide the more than two million registered developers in our Forum Nokia program with complete integrated tool packages optimized for Nokia platforms, ," said Pertti Korhonen, executive vice president and chief technology officer, Nokia. "In addition, developers creating mobile applications will be able to work more efficiently and achieve greater productivity by using the same Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for multiple programming languages and software platforms."

"Nokia's membership in Eclipse reinforces our commitment to open source initiatives," Mr. Korhonen added. "This important step enables us to simplify our creation of tools and further harmonize our development tools offering across all Nokia software platforms. We expect to benefit from open source innovation and to create interest and active participation in Nokia-led mobile tools projects for the benefit of all members of the Eclipse community."

Nokia's Eclipse initiatives date from 2004 when it announced support for the Eclipse platform in the Nokia Developer's Suite for J2ME and the Nokia Mobile Server Services SDK. Also starting in 2004, Nokia contributed key development resources and leadership to the Embedded Rich Client Platform (eRCP) project at Eclipse. Nokia also has provided the ability for Java developers to integrate any Nokia platform SDK supporting MIDP into the Eclipse environment and will make additional Eclipse tools announcements in 4Q 2005 as part of its plan to host the majority of its tools offerings in Eclipse.

"Mobile computing is an important part of Eclipse's future and supports our goal of delivering a universal tools platform," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director, Eclipse Foundation. "We are pleased to have an industry leader like Nokia on board as a Strategic Developer and actively leading key new projects focused on J2ME and mobility."