Eclipse was never just an IDE it has always been a platform. At its inception it was a framework for building IDEs by IBM. If you think the different editions of Eclipse are baffling, make sure to check out the different Rational branded Eclipse-based IDEs. There you'll find not just myriad J2EE IDEs but also IDEs for building software on p- and iSeries.
Around Eclipse 3.0, it really just became an OSGI container. So it's been an excellent pluggable framework longer than it's been a very usable Java IDE. And has been used to build plenty of non-IDE toolings like IBM Jazz.
You may complain about this "platform", but it's also the reason for its popularity. I can build a plug-in that works in Eclipse 3 and 4, almost all of the IBM products (some of them disable plug-in loading for unknown reasons), MyEclipse, JBoss IDE, Adobe FlashBuilder, Wolfram Workbench... etc. That's a very compelling position for an ISV.
Also, please don't conflate the Eclipse Platform with the Eclipse Foundation. What the Foundation does has only a little overlap with the Eclipse Java IDE itself. Its breadth does not indicate crazy feature creep on the part of the IDE; that the Eclipse Foundation supports (say) Hudson doesn't mean that suddenly you'll have a CI server in your IDE.
Around Eclipse 3.0, it really just became an OSGI container. So it's been an excellent pluggable framework longer than it's been a very usable Java IDE. And has been used to build plenty of non-IDE toolings like IBM Jazz.
You may complain about this "platform", but it's also the reason for its popularity. I can build a plug-in that works in Eclipse 3 and 4, almost all of the IBM products (some of them disable plug-in loading for unknown reasons), MyEclipse, JBoss IDE, Adobe FlashBuilder, Wolfram Workbench... etc. That's a very compelling position for an ISV.
Also, please don't conflate the Eclipse Platform with the Eclipse Foundation. What the Foundation does has only a little overlap with the Eclipse Java IDE itself. Its breadth does not indicate crazy feature creep on the part of the IDE; that the Eclipse Foundation supports (say) Hudson doesn't mean that suddenly you'll have a CI server in your IDE.