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As a leading supporter of the open source community, IBM is contributing time, talent, and technology in a number of areas. In the past year, IBM has offered source code from IBM Research Web sites and alphaWorks, and has contributed to open-source projects such as Apache. Now, we're offering true open source -- open for contributions in the way defined by the Open Source Initiative -- all from one place: the developerWorks open source zone.
True open source with the Public License
In the last few weeks, IBM has gained approval from the Open Source Initiative (OSI) for its new Public License. Software under this license is OSI Certified open-source software.
"There are now two ways IBM can contribute code. We can make changes to an existing open-source code base, or we can develop brand new source code and develop a new community around it. In this case we'll put it out under our new Public License. With our new license, IBM will actively encourage open source developers to contribute to the communities it sets up," explains James Barry, Product Manager IBM HTTP Servers and WebSphere Standard Edition.
"Programmers can be 100 per cent confident the contributions they make won't be 'stolen' by a third party, because they will be working for the general good of the software community -- not working for IBM for free," Barry continues. "Also, contributors will always have access to the base code, and will not be charged for this. The other thing our community of developers can be sure of is IBM will be giving them plenty of support and guidance." IBM will have dedicated developers working outside of IBM with the community at large.
Hosting open communities
The developerWorks server will host a variety of open-source projects. Each project will be run autonomously in the manner chosen by the project members -- the projects decide how to manage the project, how to handle code changes, and how to modify the project Web site. developerWorks is the host, providing the infrastructure; the open communities run the show.
Projects are hosted on a Linux server outside the IBM firewall. The Web server is an Apache server with a document editing package. It uses CVS for library management, CVSweb for the Web interface, and JitterBug for bug tracking.
Announcing open source projects on developerWorks
- IBM Classes for Unicode: In today's global marketplace, international software is more important than ever. IBM is a strong supporter of Unicode, the universal character set that is the foundation for modern software internationalization. In order to help speed the adoption of Unicode throughout the industry, IBM offers IBM Classes for Unicode (ICU) on an open source basis. ICU is a cooperative open-source project, with participation from five IBM engineers and a number of other companies and individuals.
The ICU is a set of C and C++ APIs that make it easy to add Unicode-based international support to an application. ICU runs on a wide variety of platforms, including Linux, Windows, Solaris, AIX, HP/UX, OS/2, and OS/390.
- Jikes: The Jikes compiler helps Web developers quickly create Java applications by converting Java source code into machine-readable byte code. Jikes translates Java source files as defined in The Java Language Specification into the bytecoded instruction set and binary format defined in The Java Virtual Machine Specification.
The Jikes open-source project has been very successful: more than 40,000 downloads since the release in December 1998, and over 300 subscribers to the mailing lists. "We've logged over 150 problem reports since the source release," says David Shields, co-author with Philippe Charles of the original version. "Many were of high quality, and some even included the source changes needed to fix a bug. We've also filed 17 queries to Sun about the language specification."
"We provide binaries for AIX, Linux Intel, Solaris, Windows 95, and Windows NT with each new release. Users have ported -- and now provide binaries for -- Jikes on
OS/2, Macintosh, Linux Power PC, Amiga (2 versions), SCO UnixWare (done by SCO), and BeOS," says Shields. "Jikes is now included in
the Debian, FreeBSD, and Red Hat distributions."
Coming soon on developerWorks...more open-source projects
Over the past year, IBM has made several open-source projects available. These will soon be consolidated under the developerWorks umbrella. Open Visualization Data Explorer is an example.
Open Visualization Data Explorer, from the IBM Deep Computing Institute, is used to analyze and create visual representations of data. Data Explorer brings together dynamic computational and rendering tools in a programmable framework that enables users to rapidly create visualizations of highly complex data from disparate sources. Visualization is an often-critical component of deep computing analysis, combining with powerful computers and advanced algorithms to solve complex business and scientific problems.
Data Explorer runs on systems ranging from UNIX-based supercomputers and workstations to PCs
and servers running Microsoft Windows or Linux. The open-source distribution is currently available from IBM Research and will soon be available from developerWorks.
IBM contributions to Apache
In other open-source initiatives, IBM has made a range of significant improvements to Apache, the industry's most popular HTTP-based Web server, and was a founding member of the Apache Foundation, a nonprofit organization providing assistance and development frameworks for Apache Open Source projects. Currently, an IBM team is working full-time with other programmers from the open source community to develop Apache 2.0, which is due to be launched in the new year.
"We took our knowledge of building large-scale Web servers and brought it over to Apache," says Barry. "We have set up a source tree, which we put all our code onto, and invited anyone to contribute to it. When this new version is available, it will be far and away the best Web server on the market. And the more robust and more capable a Web server is, the faster e-commerce is going to grow."
About the author
Jeanne Murray is on the developerWorks editorial staff. Her wealth of experience in software design and development was of little use on a train ride across Siberia but has led to other interesting experiences. She holds a B.A. in Communications and Journalism from the University of Delaware and an M.Ed. in Instructional Design from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She can be reached at
jeannem@us.ibm.com.
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