TheServerSide.com has posted this opinion piece on Eclipse Framework. What do you think?

For me, Eclipse has moved from IDE to extensible plug-in oriented Java framework for building Java applications from the ground up, but still mostly effective on the desktop/client-side Java. As an enterprise/serverside framework, Eclipse has a long way to go. I think this is why NetBeans IDE is seemingly catching up. But Eclipse does offer plug-in tool kits around enterprise Java using the Web Tools Project (WTP) which contains JST (J2EE Standards Toolkit) and WST (Web Standards Toolkit).

The problem, these never caught on. For example, as JST matured, it was only based on J2EE 1.3/1.4, the heavyweight platforms, while Spring Framework offered a lightweight alternative to J2EE. Now, Spring 2 and JBoss Seam offer open source lightweight alternatives based on/similar to Java EE 5. Eclipse is responding with Dali (EJB 3 Persistence framework) and Eclipse JSF. Certainly, Eclpse Dali-JSF framework could compete with other Java EE 5 EJB3-JSF-based framework, Seam. But right now, so much momentum is behind Spring, of course, and Seam.

We’ll see. Choices are good. But right now, Eclipse is in danger of never becoming that relevant as an enterprise Java framework solution. What do you think?