IBM and Open Source

[David P. Engvall]

kclug <<

I thought you all would get a kick out of this tidbit!

===================================

IBM makes $40 million open-source offer
By Sandeep Junnarkar
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 5, 2001, 8:00 a.m. PT

IBM announced on Monday that it will donate $40 million of its software tools to the
public domain in a move to create an open-source organization
aimed at developers.

An organization called Eclipse will make available some of IBM's software programming
tools to developers to create applications for e-businesses and Web services.
More than 150 of the leading open-source companies, such as Linux distributors Red Hat
and SuSE, along with Merant, QSSL and Rational, will be part of the Eclipse
community.

IBM has made a strong push into the open-source sector in recent years. Open source and
free software represent a challenge to Microsoft and its ubiquitous Windows
operating system software that can cost businesses thousands of dollars a month to
license. Open-source applications are generally considered lower-cost
alternatives.

"It shows IBM's commitment to open-source software," said IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky. "It
also shows that IBM understands that to reach business developers to
create open-source applications, it has to let them adopt software tools for open source
to be successful in major enterprises.

"Convincing the developers inside of large organizations or the developers that create
software for large organizations to use open-source tools is critical," Kusnetzky
added.

Nearly a year ago, IBM said it would plow $1 billion into Linux--underscoring its
increasing commitment to the open-source operating system--across all product lines:
PCs, portables, servers and mainframes.

For IBM, Linux represents a single operating system that can span a range of disparate
hardware, from wristwatches to the company's multimillion-dollar
supercomputers. IBM also sees Linux and open source giving it a competitive edge for
developer talent over Sun Microsystems and its proprietary Solaris operating
system.

By seeding the market with tools for building open-source software, IBM gains a large
base of developers building applications that can run on its servers. The
company could also benefit by offering to its customers programs built under the
open-source development model, in which thousands of programmers can collaborate
on writing and debugging software.

Monday's announcement marks another step in the company's Linux strategy. The
Eclipse-based tools run on both Linux and Windows, which allows developers to
create a single application rather than going through the hassle of creating software in
Windows and transferring it to Linux, according to IBM.

The hope for Eclipse is that with tools that work directly on both operating systems,
Linux developers can more easily turn to the more abundant software tools
available for Windows, helping to increase the number of available Linux applications.

IBM said that more than 1,200 individual developers from 63 countries are participating
in the Eclipse open-source community.