The company has committed code to the Eclipse CVS (Concurrent Version System) to enable the Eclipse open source tools platform to function on Sun's Solaris x86 system, according to Eclipse. Sun officials also acknowledged Sun's participation. CVS is the repository for Eclipse source code.

"We were first introduced to Solaris x86 by Simon Phipps, who runs open source strategy over at Sun," said Eclipse Executive Director Mike Milinkovich, in his blog entry entitled, "Hell Froze Over?"

"When you think of it, this just makes really good sense. The Solaris x86 team is working to enable one of the most popular development tools for its platform. As they should," Milinkovich said.

"I am very happy to see that sound business decisions are replacing rhetoric in the relationship between Sun and Eclipse. This is a small step forward, but it is a very tangible and pragmatic one," said Milinkovich.

Last week in an interview (http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/05/10/78190_HNgoslingsun_1.html) with InfoWorld, Sun's James Gosling, CTO for the Java enterprise and developer group at Sun, had only unkind words for Eclipse, calling it a step down from Sun's own NetBeans open source endeavor. A small accommodation is being made between Sun and Eclipse, however.