IBM Open Source

Once a purveyor of closed and proprietary solutions, the company has recast itself as flag bearer of all things open and interoperable.

IBM Open Source

IBM Open Source

  1. Open source: IBM's deadly weapon
    Once a purveyor of closed and proprietary solutions, the company has recast itself as flag bearer of all things open and interoperable. Seeing the company's peace, love and penguin ads for Linux are indeed worthy of an eye-rubbing double take. IBM officials speak fondly of an attitude adjustment that has changed Big Blue into a much more customer-focused company. They describe an altruistic metamorphosis that benefits end users who will settle for nothing less than interoperability and support of open standards. Linux does three things for IBM. First, Linux presents IBM with an opportunity to offer buyers a reliable, scalable, and relatively secure Intel-based alternative to the server versions of Microsoft's Windows. While IBM itself doesn't offer a Linux distribution (SuSE and Red Hat do that), it no doubt sees Linux' potential to reduce the company's dependency on Microsoft for sales of Intel-based servers. Second, Linux turns a high-end Intel-based server such as what IBM introduced at CeBit into a low-cost alternative to Sun's low-end servers.
       
  2. IBM Gives 500 Patents to Open-Source Developers
    IBM is giving individuals, groups, communities and companies working on open-source software free and unfettered access to innovations covered by 500 of its software patents, the Armonk. The only condition attached is that the open-source software for which the patented innovations are used must meet the Open Source Initiative definition of open-source software, now and in the future. The patents included in the pledge cover a range of software innovation, including important interoperability features of operating systems and databases, as well as internet, user interface and language processing technologies. For example, several patents cover dynamic linking processes for operating systems, while another deals with file-export protocols. A list of all the pledged patents can be viewed here (PDF). 
        
  3. IBM: Open Source is More Than Just Linux
    Scott Handy says there's more to open standards and open source than just Linux. Handy, who is the vice president of worldwide Linux business strategy at IBM, delivered a keynote on the second day of Linux World Canada. In his remarks, he struck a similar tone as Novell's David Patrick did yesterday, noting how via numerous mechanisms being "open" is a force for innovation. He also discussed the common misconception that Linux is free (as in comes without cost). According to stats cited by Handy, the Linux server market in the last quarter reported its fifth consecutive quarter of revenues of over $1 billion. When I first began working in Linux, I was worried about the 2.2 kernel vs. the 2.4 kernel and now I worried about what can we do with Linux .
       
  4. IBM's Open Source Muse 
    IBM  is donating some of its IT management wisdom to the Apache Software Foundation. But there's more to it than just goodwill. You could say that Apache is Big Blue's open source muse, or at least one of them. The wisdom, in this case, is actually WSDM (Web Services for Distributed Management, pronounced "wisdom"), which could become a standard for management interfaces of servers, routers, switches and other IT hardware and software. Essentially what WSDM does is give you a Web Services mechanism for interfacing with your manageability capabilities of whatever your hardware or software is," said Ric Telford, VP of autonomic computing at IBM. IBM's help also includes pre-built code for all the WSDM-defined capabilities called "Helper classes." Better code portability that enables the WSDM implementations to run on different Web Services runtimes is also part of IBM's contribution. 
       

  5. IBM's Open-Source Lovefest
    Big Blue" may also earn the nickname "Big Linux Supporter" as IBM continues to embrace open-source efforts to hike its market share and challenge competitors, including Microsoft. The company "plans to announce today that it will contribute some of its speech-recognition software to two open-source software groups," the New York Times reported. "The move is a tactical step . to accelerate the development of speech applications and to outmaneuver rivals, especially Microsoft, in a market that is expected to grow rapidly in the next few years with increased use in customer-service call centers, cars and elsewhere. To do this, IBM is again using the strategy of placing some of its proprietary software in open-source projects, making it available for other programmers to improve." 
      
  6. IBM behind open source attacks
    IBM Corp. has been quietly stage-managing the open source community's response to The SCO Group Inc.'s $3 billion lawsuit over Big Blue's contributions to the Linux source code, SCO's Chief Executive Officer Darl McBride said in an interview at his company's SCO Forum user conference in Las Vegas this week. We have absolute direct knowledge of this. If you go behind the scenes, the attacks that we get that don't have IBM's name on them, underneath the covers, are sponsored by IBM," McBride said. Responding to criticism that his company is trying its case against IBM in the press, McBride said that SCO has simply been responding to attacks and standing up for its rights when attacked. However, SCO's public relations (PR) department has had a busy few months. McBride proudly dumped two phone-book-sized binders of press clippings on the stage during his SCO Forum keynote on Monday as proof that his company had become more relevant in the high technology industry.
     
  7. IBM's developerWorks Open Source website development
    IBM's site developerWorks posted its first article in a series, called, Using open source software to design, develop, and deploy a collaborative Web site. The series adopts a fake organization as a client for whom to develop a collaborative website using only open source software. The goal of the series is to give developers some guidance in developing similar solutions. Of note in the first article is an interesting and comprehensive discussion of content management systems and the selection process they used to decide which framework to ultimately implement for their project. Because we needed to make this Web site design easy for ourselves and anyone adopting the solution, the ease of installing the framework and the time it would take to figure out how to use it was a key factor.
     
  8. Open source Lab Join IBM
    In its ongoing efforts to improve the examination of software patents and resolve continued concerns over their quality, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has partnered with IBM, Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the open-source community to try and achieve this goal. Among the proposals is the idea of establishing a searchable database containing an index of open-source computer code. This database should make it easier for software code developers and patent examiners to locate relevant prior art. Generally speaking, open-source software includes source code that is made available to the public under a "public license," such that the source code can be read, modified, and redistributed by users, subject to certain conditions.
       
  9. Novell and Red Hat Join IBM Open Source 
    Novell and Red Hat have been elevated to IBM's Strategic Alliance program -- IBM's highest tier partner status, according to a recent IBM announcement. The move will make it simpler for clients to acquire open standards-based Linux hardware, software, and services through integrated and streamlined sales, distribution and services channels. Inclusion in the program opens significant new channels and access to IBM innovation centers to Novell and Red Hat, including those in emerging countries like Brazil, Russia, India, China and Korea, IBM says, "to drive more open source deals in those booming markets. Other results of the move include new subscription models combining IBM offerings with Novell and Red Hat solutions; support by Novell and Red Hat of IBM's open platforms including the Java-based Apache Geronimo web server and Apache Derby database; and continued support of the Eclipse development platform.
       
  10. IBM donates Rational IP to Open Source
    IBM wants to contribute software development blueprints to the open source community to help developers make fewer coding flaws. It reckons better practices for software development will flow from its donation of a subset of the IBM Rational Unified Process (RUP), a software process platform. RUP is a collection of methods and best practices for promoting quality and efficiency throughout software development projects. IBM's donation also brings a foundation architecture and web-based tools for the sharing of software development best practices. IBM is proposing the contribution to the Eclipse Foundation, an open source community that provides a free, Java-based platform for software development. Eclipse was formed with a software donation by IBM in 2001 and is now an independent foundation with more than 100 member companies from across the software industry.
        
  11. IBM Makes Ajax Play for Open Source Collaboration
    IBM (NYSE: IBM) Latest News about IBM announced plans this week to contribute what it calls "key intellectual assets" to the open source Latest News about open source community, in an effort to help companies and software TechNet Security Center: Tools & Guidance to Defend Your Network developers adopt and share best practices for Ajax software development. With its software contributions the firm aims to foster an industry collaboration and adoption of Ajax, a technology that improves Web application responsiveness, and do so at a lower cost point and with less complexity. The technology contributions will extend the code already available in the Dojo Toolkit, which will enable internationalization of applications as well as make them fully accessible to persons with disabilities through a variety of assistive technologies, including DHTML and Accessible widgets.
       
  12. IBM: Open source and open standards technical briefing
    IBM DeveloperWorks held a technical meeting at their Bedfont Lakes office in London. I was sent an invitation and-due to the fact it sounded interesting, was free, and they were supplying lunch-I decided to tag along. The briefing was started by Kate Fairbrother from IBM Software Marketing. She gave as a welcome, some health and safety information for the day, and an apology for the main speakers having not arrived yet. However, Kevin Czap and Randy Powell soon arrived, who both currently reside in Texas, USA. They had also just arrived in the UK from Milan, Italy, the previous day. Because of that, they were unfamiliar with the London transport system; and so were a little late and disheveled.
       
  13. IBM open source gang missing key players
    IBM unveiled plans at Storage Networking World (SNW) to form an open source community to develop standards-based storage management middleware, something users have demanded for a long time. The group is working under the project name, Aperi, derived from the Latin word for "to open". The partners so far include Brocade Communication Systems Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Computer Associates International Inc., Engenio Information Technologies, Fujitsu Ltd., McData Corp., Network Appliance Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. Missing from this list are EMC Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), Hitachi Data Systems Inc. (HDS) and Symantec Corp./Veritas Software Corp. It's a good move -- it's the way the industry has to go, my only concern is that there are still going to be different groups, some participating in this one, some in groups elsewhere, and others not participating at all," said Dick Spohrer, a consultant with Maxsult, an IT integrator in Germany.
        
  14. IBM urges Sun to make Java open source
    IBM's vice president of emerging technology, IBM offered to work with Sun to create a project that would shepherd development of Java through an open-source development model. If implemented, portions of Sun's most valuable software asset--Java--would be freely available, and contributors ranging from volunteer programmers to large corporations would submit changes to the Java software. Sun's strong commitment to open-source Java would speed the development of a first-class and compatible open-source Java implementation to the benefit of our customers and our industry,  Smith wrote to Rob Gingell, a Sun vice president. "We are firmly convinced the open-source community would rally around this effort. 
       
  15. IBM, strongest proponents of open source policy
    IBM is one of the strongest proponents of open standards and has a long history of working with the open source community. We believe open source promotes innovation and quality code," Stacey A. Phillips, Country Manager, Communications IBM Indonesia . In Indonesia, she said, IBM has been actively working with Open Source and Linux community to nurture and help it thrive. In fact, IBM has been a strong supporter of "Indonesia Go Open Source" since it was launched in 2004. She made this statement to clarify earlier news report that a number of US information technology companies such as IBM, Microsoft and Oracle have criticized Indonesia's open source application policy.
       
  16. IBM: Open source, SOA born of same roots
    Open source and the service-orientated architecture were born of the same frustrations that IT users face with closely-knit software, says a top IBMer. By making source codes publicly available and highly flexible, the open-source software model ensures developers can build software and systems that interoperate seamlessly. This objective is similar to what a service-oriented architecture (SOA) aims to fulfill, said Jason Weisser, vice president of asset and integration technologies at IBM Software Group. One of the creators of Microsoft's .Net SOA framework, Weisser has been managing IBM's SOA technology since 2002. With Web services as the underpinning technology, SOA is an IT infrastructure model designed to enhance interoperability between disparate systems. It allows specific functions of backend systems to be decoupled and used independently, or alongside tools from other systems to perform computing tasks.
      
  17. IBM Extends Open Source Virtualisation Solutions
    Building upon the company's commitment to providing clients open solutions based on Linux and virtualisation technologies, IBM today announced its extensive portfolio of middleware and systems platforms will support Novell?s new SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 offerings. The new SUSE Linux Enterprise offerings incorporate the open source Xen virtualisation software to help businesses increase server utilisation and lower management costs. IBM will support Xen technology as part of the Virtualisation Engine portfolio on the company?s Intel and Opteron processor based server and blade systems. Additionally, IBM has plans to support SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 from Novell across its entire hardware and software portfolio and provide services support. Xen is an open source virtualisation software that allows multiple operating systems to run concurrently on the same physical server, allowing customers to consolidate their current workloads onto a single server.
      
  18. IBM Open Source Lab Wiki
    The purpose of this wiki is to provide an external resource for students and faculty using the IBM Open Source Linux Lab inside and outside of UMass Amherst to share information and collaborate on projects. In order to help in the editing you must first setup an account by going to User Preferences. After that, inform someone within the Admin Group, so that they can add you to the Edit Group with the ability contribute and modify content. This Summer we've been involved in the upgrade of the computer teaching lab in Machmer W-13 (formerly managed by MISER). IBM donated new desktop computers, a server, and two IBM co-ops to help administer the lab and to teach interested faculty over the next year in some of its software. The College of Social and Behavioral Science has donated space for the lab, and the research group SADRI in the Sociology department is providing lab support.
     
  19. IBM open source Java proposal puzzles Sun official
    IBM?s proposal to have the Java programming language offered under an open source format is puzzling a Sun official, who stressed Tuesday that the current licensing program ensures compatibility for the language. While IBM has maintained that Sun has too much control of Java under the Java Community Process, Java creator Sun remains steadfast in believing Sun is on the right track. Sun?s Jonathan Schwartz, executive vice president for software, questioned IBM?s efforts during a Sun ?Chalk Talk? session with the media in San Francisco, during which he also outlined Sun?s plans to boost its installed base of software worldwide. IBM last week in an open letter suggested Sun make Java available under an open source format. But Schwartz said Java places compatibility as the most important imperative. He cited the open source platform Linux as an example of a technology that has ?forked? into different implementations, albeit only one that is important.
       
  20. Sun Warms Up To IBM Open-Source Database
    Sun Microsystems has always been dismissive of IBM's open-source initiatives. But finding itself in need of a database to add to its Java Enterprise System software lineup, Sun has swallowed its pride and said it will adopt an open-source database with IBM roots. Sun last week said it will offer Derby, a lightweight Java relational database, to Java developers to embed in applications so they can capture data and keep it readily accessible without relying on an outside database. Key parts of the Java Enterprise System, such as Directory Server and Identity Manager, would benefit from an embedded database. Sun will get Derby from the Apache Software Foundation, but it's based on the Cloudscape database, which IBM donated to the foundation for open-source use. IBM acquired Cloudscape in 2001 when it bought Informix Software.
       
  21. IBM Open Source Firmware Download for PowerPC
    IBM developerWorks has posted an open source Slimline Open Firmware (SLOF) download intended to aid the development of operating systems and virtualization layers for PowerPC-based machines. One thing that's kind of neat about it is that it is under a pretty liberal BSD-like
     license- something I have not often seen IBM do. If I am not much mistaken (and please correct me if I am), this license makes it compatible with both GPL'd and BSD'd projects, among others.
       
  22. IBM pushes Dojo open source Ajax toolkit
    IBM has donated the intellectual property of a set of technologies to the open source community in an effort to increase the adoption of Ajax technologies.  Big Blue plans to work with the Dojo open source JavaScript toolkit, expanding the application with support for building multi-language applications. IBM will also help the application to meet the forthcoming Dynamic Web Content Accessibility specification being developed within the World Wide Web Consortium. The Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) technique allows developers to create interactive web applications. A static web page exchanges data only when a user clicks on a link or button. Java applications transmit data behind the scenes, making for more responsive and user-friendly online applications. Popular examples of Java applications include Goggle's Gmail and the Flickr online photo-sharing application.