I think that I am in a position to state categorically that more developers became involved in Eclipse because IBM set it free. The basic reason is that IBM competitors were not willing to use or contribute to Eclipse projects as long as IBM was in control. I can't say I blame them.

Just look at what's happened since independence day...BEA is now leading the WebTools project, Sybase is leading the DataTools project, Actuate is leading BIRT, etc. etc. It is highly unlikely this would have happened with IBM in a controlling position.