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Eclipse Passage

Eclipse Passage is an Eclipse Foundation project that provides an open source framework and tools for license management and software provisioning for Eclipse-based products and applications (software asset and entitlement management).

  • Framework for managing software licenses, entitlements, and usage for Eclipse-based products (license management).
  • Tooling for provisioning, activation, and configuration of Eclipse applications and features (software provisioning).
  • Support for integrating commercial licensing models into Eclipse RCP and Eclipse-based products (application licensing).
  • Extensible architecture for custom license policies, validation logic, and usage tracking (policy and compliance management).
  • Eclipse ecosystem integration as an Eclipse Technology project under the Eclipse Foundation governance model (open source project governance).

More About Eclipse Passage

Eclipse Passage is an open source project under the Eclipse Foundation that focuses on license management and software provisioning for products built on Eclipse technologies. It targets vendors and teams that distribute Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) applications or Eclipse-based tools and need a structured way to handle commercial or controlled licensing while remaining within an open source tooling stack. The project addresses the problem of managing entitlements, activation, and controlled access to product features in an environment where the underlying platform itself is open source.

The core capability of Eclipse Passage is its framework for license management (license and entitlement management). It provides concepts and mechanisms for defining license models, associating licenses with products and features, and validating license conditions at runtime. This enables product teams to implement controlled access to features, track which components are licensed for a given installation, and support various licensing schemes through configuration and extension rather than custom one-off implementations.

In addition, Eclipse Passage delivers tools for provisioning, activation, and configuration of Eclipse applications (software provisioning and deployment). This includes mechanisms to bind licensed content to user or installation contexts, manage activation workflows, and integrate licensing checks into the startup and update behavior of Eclipse-based products. These capabilities are suited for commercial distributions of Eclipse RCP applications where certain plugins or feature sets are only available under specific license terms.

The project’s architecture is designed to be extensible (extensibility framework). Eclipse Passage offers extension points and APIs that allow implementers to define custom license policies, validation logic, data stores, and integration with external systems. Vendors can plug in their own back-end services for license issuance, fulfillment, and reporting, while relying on Passage within the client application to enforce and interpret license data. This separation of concerns supports diverse enterprise licensing strategies, including per-seat, per-feature, or time-limited licenses, as configured by the solution provider.

In enterprise environments, Eclipse Passage is positioned as part of the application lifecycle for Eclipse-based tooling (application lifecycle and distribution management). It is used when organizations produce internal or commercial Eclipse applications that must align with corporate licensing policies, auditing requirements, or revenue models. By providing a dedicated licensing framework rather than ad hoc code, Passage can simplify maintenance, improve consistency across product lines, and help align product behavior with centrally managed entitlement rules.

Within the Eclipse Foundation ecosystem (open source ecosystem integration), Eclipse Passage is categorized as an Eclipse Technology project. It integrates with the Eclipse platform and is developed under the Eclipse Foundation’s governance, licensing, and IP processes. For enterprise directories and taxonomies, Eclipse Passage can be classified under software license management, entitlement management, and Eclipse application provisioning frameworks, with a particular focus on Eclipse RCP and Eclipse-based product distributions.