We have heard of JBoss having a microkernel design based on JMX, however there's been little mention about the Eclipse microkernel.  The book "Contributing to Eclipse" by Gamma and Beck mentions it, however, aside from Eclipse have you seen it used elsewhere in anger?

Well surprisingly, yes!  There's a project called JLense, that actually uses the Eclipse microkernel to startup a complete Swing based application.  Yes, Swing, not SWT!  So, when Russell Beattie dreams about Eclipse in Swing, he should take some inspiration looking at this project.  In fact, when it first came out, I was completely stunned!

While, we're on this topic, I do suggest also looking at the browser that comes with AspectJ.  Its a Swing application, however it has a style that extemely similar to Eclipse.