I always considered the two licenses for completely incompatiable, but
it is possible that interpretation have been too zealous. But IANAL.
A friend referred me to blog posts [1] [2] which provide more information on the EPL/GPL issue.
The FSF blog [1] does provide a solution: ...the EPL and the GPL are not compatible. However, developers who want to release GPL-covered plug-ins for Eclipse can address this issue by providing an additional permission with their license that grants users permission to combine their work with Eclipse in this way.
In my opinion, this is implied, as the original GPL'd work is an Eclipse plugin and was intended to be linked against Eclipse's API. It's not as if I'm modifying a standalone program and turning it into an Eclipse plugin against the author's wishes, but IANAL either.
I have tried to contact the original author to see if he is willing to
re-license, or at least provide the additional permission.