“The Eclipse Communication Framework (ECF) provides APIs that simplify the creation of interoperable, extensible, reliable distributed applications. The framework is useful for aiding the creation of plugins, tools, or full Eclipse RCP applications, that require client-server and/or peer-to-peer messaging and communications. ECF also provides a simple-but-general component model for distributed applications, and a growing library of reusable components for this component model. Communications components such as service lookup and discovery, presence and instant messaging, file sharing, pub/sub messaging, and others are provided by the framework and third parties, which may be used/reused by developers for creating communication-enabled tools and applications. Further, using ECF extension points, programmers can easily extend ECF itself by implementing an ‘ECF protocol provider’. Such custom implementations allow interoperability with any desired (proprietary or open) communications protocols. Finally, ECF also provides fully functional example applications using these APIs…such as XMPP Instant Messaging/chat, file and URL-sharing, a simple shared whiteboard, and real-time collaborative editing.” The people that choose the Eclipse Rich Client Platform might find this addition as a really nice feature. I wich the Azureus people would contribute code to it (and vice versa) :). This reminds me of the time the sigmalab team worked on our own Communication Framework and I would like to see the architecture that’s behind this project.