Eclipse Open Collaboration Tools

Eclipse Open Collaboration Tools (OCT) consists of the Open Collaboration Protocol and the Open Collaboration Server application. The same protocol and server are used for all client integrations. In addition, the project provides a set of libraries for integrating collaborative editing with multiple editing paradigms and in multiple IDEs or other applications.

Integrations with specific text editors or other kinds of editors may be part of this project, unless they are already provided by the respective application. For example, a VS Code extension is offered by OCT, while a Theia extension is offered by the Eclipse Theia project.

The OCT project does not cover editor or IDE implementations, but rather focuses on integrating with existing applications. It also excludes means for direct communication such as audio or video streaming. Users are encouraged to connect via other meeting apps during their collaboration session. However, basic chat functionality may be added if the OCT project team finds this useful.

There is a public instance of the Open Collaboration Server at open-collab.tools, which is currently operated by TypeFox. The OCT project maintains the website and documentation available at that domain as well as the source code of the server application. However, the operation of the actual server instance is not part of this project.