ECO is now a property of CapableObjects, a partner of CodeGear. Whether you care about ECO or not, this is a relevant news, probably the most relevant I found for the Delphi community after getting back from my two weeks in France.

CapableObjects

A few years back, a Swedish company called BoldSoft created the Bold framework implementing the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) in Delphi. They were later bought by Borland, created the ECO framework bringing their MDA architecture to .NET, and were part of the CodeGear spinoff. Now they are becoming a separate company, CapableObjects (their web site still doesn't say a lot). From what I understand, it was critical for the success of ECO to keep a focus on .NET (while Delphi is being refocused on native development) and to integrate with Visual Studio, something very hard to do under CodeGear's umbrella. In their words "The team formed an entirely independent and separate company in order to give the ECO technology a chance to expand and to become available to a broader base of users".

You can read the Developer's Network announcement and FAQ: "CapableObjects, formerly the Borland ECO development team, have entered into an agreement with CodeGear..." In the article you can see that Jan Norden will be CapableObjects' CTO. You can also read Nick's blog post. There is also a lot in this newsgroup thread, including a clarification by Swindell that "The [ECO] IP and technology are still CodeGear's"

I was never a huge fan of MDA in general and ECO in particular, but I see it has a specific role. With CodeGear moving away from ALM and a corporate development focus (at least for Delphi), I think this move makes a lot of sense for both parts, but I have the impression that the role of ECO in Delphi (something that never took off for most Delphi developers) will be less central from now on. In short, ECO will have more chances and Delphi will remain more focused. Thumb up!

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