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Programming IBM IT Technology

IBM to Open Projects at SourceForge.net 179

Posted by Zonk from the go-big-blue dept.
cfelde writes "On Friday, IBM said it is contributing some 30 open-source projects to SourceForge.net. IBM also said it is expanding its own developerWorks Web site with more resources including training in PHP and other popular technologies." This probably dovetails with IBM's new full on support of the PHP language.
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IBM to Open Projects at SourceForge.net More

IBM to Open Projects at SourceForge.net

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  • Why am I worried.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DoraLives ( 622001 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @01:46PM (#11779951)
    that this will all turn out horribly wrong in the end? Am I just alergic to large corporations in general?

    Is my tinfoil hat on too tight?

    • Maybe...

      but remember, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

      I think both IBM and yours (and mine) interests are against Micro$oft.
      • This is not the terrace at a football game, Microsoft is not the enemy. They are merely a competitor to a fraction of OSS projects.

        Open source software lives and thrives within a Windows environment. Given any of the common OS's, I can download and install legal software without paying a penny more. It doesn't matter if I am using a Mac or an x86 or something else, software is available.

        If you want the Linux OS to suceed however, you have to convince Dell and HP and Time and Tiny that the OS on their m

    • Re:Why am I worried.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by javaxman ( 705658 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @02:03PM (#11780145) Journal
      that this will all turn out horribly wrong in the end? Am I just alergic to large corporations in general? Is my tinfoil hat on too tight?

      It's really hard to fault you, actually. History is hard to forget, and it's not unreasonable to wonder if a company can really change it's culture and philosophy so radically.

      On the other hand, if someone is giving you a bunch of cool stuff ( i.e. source code ), and doing so under terms ( i.e. license ) that are acceptable to you... it's generally a good thing. I'm not seeing the downside, at least for OSS developers. The downside could be there, of course... but I can't easily think of what it could be.

      The upside for IBM, on the other hand, is pretty obvious... it's not like they've done this entirely without thinking of their own benefit. Maybe thinking of it that way will make you feel better? It's not so much that IBM has radically changed ( though it has ), it's that they've figured out how to leverage open source development ?

      • I agree with your reasoning but it isn't like IBM is putting AIX code or DB2 code up on SourceForge. That would be a radical change.

      • shit! If a company figures out how to benefit people AND increase their profits, marketshare, and mindshare, then that is GREAT imho!!! That's the way it should be! Do good things and get rewarded. You can take an easier path (not gonna say omg ms is evil or anything, though obviously look at their past, and look at ibm in the 80's, look at sco etc) of taking the approach of exploiting people and excluding others for the sake of locking people in for profit.

        Ibm is behaving great, and I'll support them.
        • Ibm is behaving great, and I'll support them. My mom bought a thinkpad, if I buy a laptop it'll be a thinkpad

          If you want to help out IBM, you'd be doing them a much bigger favor by contributing to one of their open source efforts ( and promoting Linux over Windows ) than by supporting the PC hardware division they just sold off. ThinkPads are cool and all, but they're not being sold by the the same company that's releasing this source. If you want to buy IBM hardware that actually supports IBM, it's going

          • If you want to help out IBM, you'd be doing them a much bigger favor by contributing to one of their open source efforts ( and promoting Linux over Windows ) than by supporting the PC hardware division they just sold off. ThinkPads are cool and all, but they're not being sold by the the same company that's releasing this source. If you want to buy IBM hardware that actually supports IBM, it's going to have to be a Power server.

            Actually, I suppose in the near-term the sale isn't officially complete, but if
            • There's more IBM parts in a Mac these days than there is in an IBM PC. How odd is that?

              +5 insightful! Not to mention hi-frickin'-larious!

              That's just weird. Why hadn't I thought of it that way? Of course... this dual G5 PowerMac sitting on my desk has way, way more to do with IBM than any "IBM PC"...

    • Maybe it's too tight. I mean, since IBM started to embrace free software, they haven't done a bad move. On the contrary, they make very intelligent moves. Of course we all know that their purpose is not to make the world better, whatever that means. But it seems that for now the people taking decisions concerning free software at IBM are always trying to do things the right way.
      I mean, when you think about it, does IBM really care if project X'sources, funded by them, are downloadable by everybody ? Oponen
      • "I mean, since IBM started to embrace free software, they haven't done a bad move"

        Actually they have. Here's an example:

        After buying Rational a few years ago, they killed Rational Visual test because it was a low-cost alternative to Rational Robot. Not only won't they support it, they won't sell you a copy, let you make a copy, or release the source code.

        Hey, they have every right to do this and it's exactly what you'd expect from a closed source company like IBM. My only complaint is their attempt to po

      • since IBM started to embrace free software, they haven't done a bad move. On the contrary, they make very intelligent moves.

        Just like a chess game. I wonder if they repurposed Deep Thought and Deep Blue toward developing software strategies.

    • Re:Why am I worried.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mickwd ( 196449 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @03:07PM (#11780844)
      All corporations want it money.

      Lots and lots and lots of money.

      But that's it. Nothing else.

      If they think the best way to make money is by screwing their customers over, then many of them will do it.

      But if a large corporation thinks it can make more money using a different approach, it will.

      Free and open source software is the biggest movement in the software industry today, and is likely to be so for a long time. IBM is riding the wave, so to speak, but is smart enough to realise it's got to give a little as well as take. And it can still make lots of money doing so.

      It's also in its interest to support a movement in which many people (but not all) have a strong dislike of several of their major competitors: Microsoft (deservedly so, I would say), Sun (a little harshly, in my opinion) and, increasingly it would seem, HP.

      • You know, I get kind of bothered by the ub3rcynicism about corporations sometimes. It's not that corporations can't get away with exploitation--they do. It's not that there aren't people who put their personal wealth above all other concerns--there are.

        But when we rant about how corporations are fundamentally evil and never going to change, all we're doing is accepting it. Corporations aren't bloated, undead beast-things that exist off of the souls of the living (well, except EA). They're organizations o
      • Managements do, however, change. So do corporate policies. One needs to be certain to never trust a corporation so much that one becomes dependent on it, because it may change out from under you.

        I can quite accept that IBM of the current decade has "good" motives. This helps me project the motives of the IBM of 10-15 years from now. But it's no certain guide.

        I put more faith in the GPL...and even there I'm not certain. One never knows what some legislature may decide, or some court.

        For this reason I
    • I agree with you, James. You have reason to tighten that tinfoil hat.

      Large corporations/foundations grow until they realize they are in it for their own interests. Upon that realization they feel it is no longer necessary and begin to think they are self-sustaining without the need to keep user support.

      Eventually, one company will maintain user interest and will dominate the industry to be broken up by legislation paid for by other large conglomerates protecting their own interests.

      -Wes
      (CBSC few years

    • Re:Why am I worried.... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You're probably thinking everybody donates to opensource for altruistic reasons, so a donation from IBM is suspicious. But these days, there are solid economic reasons to donate to opensource. If you have software that benefits you, but which is not a moneymaking product or a real competitive advantage, then it only makes sense to opensource it. You can get other people helping you develop it, and reduce your costs. What's not to like?
    • Am I just alergic to large corporations in general?

      Did you read the instructions on the bottle. It did say not to be taken orally. :-)

  • Great news! (Score:1, Informative)

    by keiferb ( 267153 )
    It's always good to see a big name, particularly one that's not often at the top of the who-do-we-want-to-flame-today list, getting behind OSS products and sites. Yay, IBM!

  • Amazing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @01:47PM (#11779962) Homepage
    It's amazing how well IBM has been transforming itself from the universally-recognized Bad Guy(tm) to a geek's best friend ;) Back in the day, IBM was the Evil Empire of the computer world.

    • Re:Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @01:51PM (#11780008)
      IBM is just protecting their interests. They beleive (like most people here) that most software will become a comodity in the near future, and instead of fighting it they roll along. I happen to beleive it's wise, but's quite a bold move.

      Anyway, yes, it is weird. Not to long ago IBM was as hatred as Microsoft is now...

    • Re:Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by someguy456 ( 607900 ) <someguy456@phreaker.net> on Friday February 25, 2005 @01:52PM (#11780030) Homepage Journal
      It's amazing how well IBM has been transforming itself from the universally-recognized Bad Guy(tm) to a geek's best friend ;) Back in the day, IBM was the Evil Empire of the computer world.

      If IBM was able to turn around from the "Bad Guy(tm)" to a geek's best friend, I think there is a possibility that many years from now, today's Evil Empire, Microsoft, might become a geek's best friend while, oh, let's say Google became the new "Bad Guy(tm)

      May God help us all...
      • Excuse me for a moment.

        HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

        The only reason IBM is turning around is because they are giving up control of the software. MSFT never had a good product to begin with. Why would anyone continue it. Netscape 4 might of sucked, but Netscape 3 was good. A Base in other words was needed.

      • Re:Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @02:40PM (#11780559) Homepage Journal
        IBM, while dominating and monopolistic in its day, did have a reputation for quality and topnotch research.

        Yes, there is MS Research [microsoft.com] but it's in no way comparable to IBM Research [ibm.com].

        And don't even mention MS and "quality" in the same breath unless the words "lack of" are placed between them.

        • Re:Amazing (Score:4, Funny)

          by loconet ( 415875 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @03:54PM (#11781291) Homepage
          "Yes, there is MS Research but it's in no way comparable to IBM Research."

          No kidding, specially when you have research like this at IBM:

          "Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Quantum Computing"

          vs Research like this at MS:


          "Turn Your Photos into Movies
          Researchers from the lab in Beijing have developed a system that can take your still photographs and automatically convert them into motion."

    • Re:Amazing (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Cyno ( 85911 )
      IBM was the Evil Empire of the computer world.

      Today its Microsoft. But how many people love them for it? How many people would switch to a different OS because they believe monopolies are bad? Calling these corporations Evil Empires does nothing to help the ignorant consumer.

      If Microsoft released their source code under the GPL they would also be a geek's best friend. Because geeks like me believe actions speak louder than words. As long as nobody seems to care about the threat a large corporation p
      • is it suns turn to be evil this week or next week? i know its my turn to do the shopping this week so yes, its suns turn to be evil the week after next.

      • I can't speak for the rest of the world but in America people don't give a crap. No matter how evil and vile somebody acts if they can promise you a couple of bucks or offer up some idealogy the sheeple will fall for it hook line and sinker.

        Look at it this way. 9/11 was the single largest failure of american intelligence since pearl harbor and the guy most responsible for it got a metal. The people that were most responsible for sloppy planning and execution of the invasion of Iraq were all promoted, the g
        • There is significant evidence that Intelligence did not fail, but rather was disregarded. It's not proof, and in this situation it's probably impossible to get proof. But there IS significant evidence.

          So I'm not at all sure that you should be blaming the intelligence community rather than those who refused to listen.
          • " There is significant evidence that Intelligence did not fail, but rather was disregarded."

            That's not really all that much better. Either way the head of the CIA should have been canned instead of being given a metal. In fact the president should have been canned too.

            It's the job of the CIA to tell the truth to the national security advisor. It's her job to tell the president to truth, and it's the job of the president to make decisions.

            So what happened? Tenant was given a metal, rice was promoted and b

            • I'm generally not a spelling/grammar snob, but you got this one wrong in three times in your last two posts: the word you're looking for is "medal", not "metal".

      • Today its Microsoft. But how many people love them for it? How many people would switch to a different OS because they believe monopolies are bad? Calling these corporations Evil Empires does nothing to help the ignorant consumer.

        it does *some* good. there are people who wouldn't even think to consider MS as evil unless they hear someone say it, and they start thinking "hmmm, now why does he say that?"

        So, uh, who ya gonna call Evil next? :)

        whoever's evil :-)

    • Well ! I am happy to see that the "don't be evil" mantra initiated by google is more and more seen as a sound business practice. IBM is not completly "evil free" :) but they are slowly changing thanks in great part to Lou GERSTNER who as has completly changed the company's soul and business.

      I hope to see more and more corporations being "less evil" AND succeeding so they will be imitated by other ones.

      Maybe even one day we will see a "lesser evil" Microsoft although I am afaid we will have to wait a bit

  • IBM's rhype also now open source (Score:5, Informative)

    by Xpilot ( 117961 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @01:50PM (#11780002) Homepage
    On a somewhat related note, IBM has released [com.com] rhype [ibm.com], it's research hypervisor as open source under the GPL. This should spice up the free hypervisor community. First Xen [cam.ac.uk], now IBM's rhype. Choice is so good :)

  • Wait... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 25, 2005 @01:50PM (#11780005)
    do we like IBM this week?
    • You seem to be confused with Sun.

    • Re:Wait... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Spoing ( 152917 )
      1. do we like IBM this week?

      IBM was a rat bastard company ready to meet it's ultimate demise around 1990. Nobody trusted or liked them...except for the fact that IBM was huge.

      Then, early in the 90s the stock crashed to about 1/3 of it's 1980s price. And stayed there. That woke the shareholders up who decided that the IBM institution had to be obliterated if anything of the share value could be saved.

      Since then, they have gone through multiple reforms. Early on, many of those changes did not improve

  • So what are these apps? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Thirty hello world programs in COBOL?

  • IBM And MONEY (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Indes ( 323481 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @01:52PM (#11780026) Homepage
    They have it, why not create a sourceforge like site for their own projects instead of using the good will of other open source companies?

    or do they plan to donate some money to it to help it all as a whole??

    IBM is in an odd situation no doubt, but using OpenSource public tools when properly funded seems somewhat.. rude, no?

    • Re:IBM And MONEY (Score:5, Funny)

      by Stradenko ( 160417 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @01:56PM (#11780070) Homepage
      I'm happy to let IBM put its shit in our community wheelbarrow. More shit for everyone can only be good.
    • FFS! You want them to be like Sun, in a parallel universe?
    • I don't see it as rude, on the contrary I feel they're trying to show they're part of the community. I get distrustful when a company proclaims it's releasing something as open source, but it's under some weird-ass license I've never seen before and only available from their site. Putting it on sourceforge shows it's the real deal.

    • Re:IBM And MONEY (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Aspirator ( 862748 )
      Sourceforge is the acknowledged place these things
      are coordinated, It is great to see a giant like
      IBM contributing in the 'commoners' forum.

      > but using OpenSource public tools when
      > properly funded seems somewhat.. rude, no?

      Rude? NO. It is a very good thing.
      It is a testament to how good some of the Open Source tools have become.

    • Re:IBM And MONEY (Score:3, Informative)

      by kiore ( 734594 )

      Putting the source code in a repository they neither own nor control makes me feel more comfortable that they are sincere.

      Given IBM's recent history, it didn't surprise me to hear that they are a cash contributor to Sourceforge. The "site sponsors" block on the left of the Sourceforge homepage contains at least one link to an IBM site. I clicked the DB2 link to see where it went ... www14.software.ibm.com

    • They have it, why not create a sourceforge like site for their own projects instead of using the good will of other open source companies?

      If they use a common resource like SourceForge, the will avoid accusations that they may later revoke access.

      E.g., IBM starts a new site called IBMForge.net. People will jump and scream because, rather than use existing resources (like SourceForge), they are trying to keep a tight reign on "their" code. By going GPL and using SourceForge they have chosen what is

    • Perhaps you mean something like DeveloperWorks: Open Source [ibm.com]?

      But isn't being a team player the whole point, anyways? IBM can join teams when it doesn't want to start one, right?

    • You jackass. They help pay Linus' damn salary [osdl.org]. I suspect they might kick a few pennies towards sourceforge as well.

      No, funding and using public Open Source tools does not seem rude.

    • They have it, why not create a sourceforge like site for their own projects instead of using the good will of other open source companies?

      Wha? Why on earth should they reinvent the wheel?

      Does having IBM projects on Sourceforge diminish the value of the other projects hosted there somehow?

      Why spend money building Yet Another Online Source Code Repository, when they could save that money and put it into improving their OSS projects?

      How is any of this "rude"?

  • Good news for PHP... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bc90021 ( 43730 ) * <bc90021&bc90021,net> on Friday February 25, 2005 @01:53PM (#11780034) Homepage
    ...and I'm glad it was included in this story, since I hadn't seen the prior one.

    While a lot of people like to knock PHP (mostly Java guys, but hey ;) ), I love it. It's easy, functional, and lately, a lot more mature with the OO aspects. (I have one class now that I use for database access, and it makes life so much easier.)

    With things like PHP-GTK [php.net], you can even use it to write applications, and with IBM behind it, things will likely only improve.

    • Re:Good news for PHP... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by harborpirate ( 267124 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @02:18PM (#11780293)
      Languages are a tool - and each tool has its own use. You shouldn't use a screwdriver to pound a nail, as it were. Because even though you might get it to work, you're putting more effort into it than you really need to.

      To me, PHP is great for small, agile projects - ones that need to be designed and written quickly, and require a lot of changes to the code to happen throughout implementation.

      I think OO PHP isn't all bad - being able to compartmentalize your code for reuse and complexity reduction is great.

      My concern, however, is that people will start to look at PHP as an enterprise level language, which in my opinion, it isn't. Every PHP project that I've worked on started to break down after a certain level of complexity. I think part of this was due to the lack of Object Orientation, but I think part of it was also the nature of the language itself. I'll be interested to see what IBM can do with PHP, but lets just say I don't envy their guys if they're trying to switch their enterprise level development to use it.
      • It think it is moslty due to the nature of the language.

        If a project gets complex, and you don't have a compiler to check your code before it runs, refactoring gets really difficult. You can still do some sort of unit testing. But the combination of unit testing and strong type language is much more powerfull.

        If refactoring gets difficult and adjustments have to be implimented due to requirement changes, bugs will start to appear. And they will only rear their heads once the code is executed.

        A class mig

      • PHP... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by einhverfr ( 238914 )
        I program in Perl, Python, and PHP. And I work on large (30k line) programs in both Perl and PHP.

        PHP is a good language for certain classes of applications including web applications in general. But additionally, you can preprocess any text-based file with it too. This means:

        1) Preprocessing configuration files is easy
        2) Web apps are easy to build in PHP
        3) PHP has a number of features that place it *way* ahead of Microsoft's ASP for enterprise applications. Variable-based includes for example.

        That
        • You mention ASP. Have you looked at ASP.NET?
          • I have looked into ASP.Net.

            Personally I don't really like it. It has its uses and I understand why it was designed the way it was, but it really looks to me like warmed over Java to me. Note that I am not a fan of Java so this is not a compliment.

            PHP is powerful because it allows you to basically preprocess text files. This can have all sorts of uses from building configuration file templates to web application development. ASP gives you the same capability but is quite a bit less powerful (for examp
          • ASP was a total rip-off of PHP2. How far has PHP evolved since v.2? As with most MS "embrace and extend" projects, Active Server Pages haven't really evolved much, .NET connectivity or no .NET connectivity.
      • youve obviously never heard of a manchester nail (hammer a screw when your in a rush or cant be arsed)

    • Re:Good news for PHP... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by teknomage1 ( 854522 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @02:23PM (#11780350) Homepage
      I' pretty sure people knock it because it's easy. Some people feel intimidated by things being made easier for the masses because they're afraid of being obsolete. A rather prominent greek philosopher came out against paper because he felt it'd be the downfall of society. Young people wouldn't bother to memorize things anymore and so and so forth. Many people attack PHP as a language that let's bad programmers make websites, so clearly they're talking about the downfall of programming civilization. Now php does have some syntax issues, but hopefully those'll get worked out before too long. I still think it makes a great first language for people to discover programming with.
      • its also very useful for small things, like adding a HTTP header, inserting the date, sending email, includes (for modular HTML).

        Im using the includes on a site im working on at the moment because its so easy - one line and the top and one line at the bottom of each page, and i just have to put the content in the middle

  • List of the Projects? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by D4rk Fx ( 862399 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @01:53PM (#11780035) Homepage
    Does anyone have a list of all thr projects IBM is helping? TFA didn't seem to have all of them, only a couple

    • Re:List of the Projects? (Score:4, Informative)

      by UTF-8 ( 680134 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @02:16PM (#11780279) Homepage
      I don't know all of them, but one of the projects that was moved was http://icu.sourceforge.net/

      IBM has been very involved with open source for many years, and now they are moving the hosting of many projects to other sites. One of them is to sourceforge. The donation was more of a move from DeveloperWorks to Sourceforge because of the increasing costs (bureaucracy) to maintain many projects on ibm.com.

      ICU (International Components for Unicode) has been on DeveloperWorks and AlphaWorks as open source since 1999.

  • which 30 projects? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 25, 2005 @01:54PM (#11780050)
    are they 30 projects that IBM is interested in or 30 projects that they were planning to abandon but felt they could get some goodwill outof instead?

    • Re:which 30 projects? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MicroBerto ( 91055 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @02:43PM (#11780605)
      Everyone wants to know which projects, and we'll find out soon enough.

      However, I don't like the attitude in the above post. In the grand scheme of things, 30 projects is NOTHING, and it doesn't matter what they do. What matters is if collaboration and support rise and IBM likes the results that they get, they will do it MORE.

      So quit griping - any support is good, and if the community supports it in return, you've made a good ally and have a good future.

  • The Why (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Friday February 25, 2005 @01:57PM (#11780074) Homepage Journal
    IBM Software is turning up the noise on its open-source contributions.

    What it's about:

    An interesting bit on the transition and recovery of IBM was on the BBC a couple days back, refreshing and adding a layer of information to my memory of experience with the behemoth IT company. IBM's core business is selling service, not hardware (they sold the PC unit to Lenovo) and big iron doesn't sell much anymore, so they've come to the point of making some hardware, but throwing their weight behind systems and services. Why so much given to Open Source? IBM is more than just friendly to Linux and Open Source, but see them as their life blood. They won't make money pushing systems built around Microsoft Windows, because that leaves too much leverage in an external (and sometimes unfriendly) camp. Not to overlook the taint associated over the past few years with gaping security holes in Microsoft products, which could reflect very negatively on IBM having to go in and clean up the mess. A couple years ago IBM had already broken the 1G$ barrier on Linux systems, in one quarter. I haven't looked at their company statements lately, but it's clear this is their planned direction of growth.

  • Large Corporations and Criticism (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sameerdesai ( 654894 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @01:57PM (#11780076)
    It's amazing how we criticise M$ for not being open and IBM for tring to be open.
    • No it's not. People are more likely to complain about small discomforts than praise small acomplishments. The scales tip to criticizing.
      1. It's amazing how we criticise M$ for not being open and IBM for tring to be open.

      There is a substantial difference between the two.

      For the most part....

      When IBM opens a project they are on the same footing as any other person, group, or corporation. Anyone can either fork or take over the project if IBM drops the ball or attempts to take the project in a direction somebody else does not want.

      When Microsoft 'opens' a project, it's in a glass case. You can see it, though you can't touch or can

  • You can't have it both ways. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by winkydink ( 650484 ) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Friday February 25, 2005 @01:58PM (#11780090) Homepage Journal
    People gripe when big, evil corporations develop proprietary code and then when these corporations open it up, they gripe that there must be a hidden agenda.

    I think some folks just like to gripe.

    Opening this code will dovetail nicely with IBM becoming more of a services-focused company. When BigCo wants a project implemented & maintained using open source, IBM will be there to lend a hand (for a price of course).

    • People gripe when big, evil corporations develop proprietary code and then when these corporations open it up, they gripe that there must be a hidden agenda.

      I think some folks just like to gripe.

      Or else maybe there's more than one 'people' out there. But whatever, gripe away.
    • Maybe people have just been screwed over by big companies too many times to give them their unquestioning loyalty. I think that that is a good thing. It wasn't too long ago that IBM was just another "big, evil corporation", and things could change again.

      This is a situation where IBM's goals and the open source community's coincidentally meet, and nothing more. Yes, supporters of open source software should be happy about that and develop as productive a relationship with IBM as possible, but it doesn'

  • This is a good move, (Score:5, Interesting)

    by robyannetta ( 820243 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @02:00PM (#11780113) Homepage
    As we learned in The Art of War by Sun Tzu, to win the war, make as many allies as possible.

    IBM learned early on that if you have the Linux community backing a multi-billion dollar corporate entity like themselves, they stand a helluva good chance toppling that Redmond, Washington company they don't like.

    They have my vote.

    • Great book, I recommend it to all of you. It's just cool.

      Anyway, I really think IBM is just using SF's free bandwidth :) hopefully they contribute! I didn't RTFA though, just wanted to comment on the awesomeness of The Art of War

    • I'm sure they're "just using" sourceforge...but sourceforge exists to be used, and they require that any code they host have a Open License. (And if I read correctly, this time IBM is choosing to use the GPL.)

      So that's fine. Sourceforge is being used as it wants to be used, and IBM is licensing things properly. And contributing the source.

      I'm certain that everyone has other agendas that are being satisfied by their actions, but that's not new. So does everyone. We trust that the existing safeguards
    • Okay, pardon me as I bristle at the mistake you make on the Art of War. Sun-tzu wrote that one's real competition is the closer enemy, not the strongest of a more distant field.

      This does not mean to make as many allies as possible. It means that you support "competitors" who are not really in your field in such a manner that you do not increase their power, because increasing their power could make them a threat to you.

      This allows you to focus more closely on the real competition by placating those who
  • One industry executive who requested not to be named said that IBM's push into PHP and scripting reflects IBM's disillusionment with the Java standardisation process and the industry's inability to make Java very easy to use.

    "IBM's been so fed up with Java that they've been looking for alternatives for years," the executive said. "They want people to build applications quickly that tap into IBM back-ends... and with Java, it just isn't happening."

    It took them this long?
  • The enemy of my enemy, it's my friend :-D
  • Finally... An RPG section!

  • OS/2 ??!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by BitwiseX ( 300405 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @02:13PM (#11780250)
    God I hope they put the source code for OS/2 up.. I could use a good laugh. ;)

  • Then again... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ulric ( 531205 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @02:19PM (#11780311) Homepage
    Microsoft Contributes To Open Source Site [crn.com]
    • Only if they get to define what constitutes a contribution. (And what constitutes Open Source.)

      For each example, look at who did the official donation. Then look at the license chosen. Then ask yourself "What does this imply?"

      In one case the license wasn't anything anyone reasonable would call open.
      In another case the license was open, but the contribution was by people working inside of MS, rather than by the company. But any patents involved were owned by the company. (Neat trick, no?)
      In one case t

  • What projects? (Score:3, Informative)

    by HogGeek ( 456673 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @02:23PM (#11780356)
    I tried doing a search for both people and project that contain IBM, but nothing solid.

    Is there a list of software that they donated? I'm curious if its "newer" stuff, of old stuff they no longer user, nor implement themselves...

  • CVS Status (Score:2, Informative)

    by YodaToo ( 776221 )
    Unfortunately all of their projects will show zero files committed until they get this Nov. 2003 issue [sourceforge.net] fixed.

  • What about the cloudscape contest? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by stm2 ( 141831 ) <(moc.selatigidseneg) (ta) (issabs)> on Friday February 25, 2005 @04:16PM (#11781656) Homepage Journal
    This may seems OT, I am not sure. But IBM sponsored a contest in Sourceforge (with iPODs as prices). It was supposed to announce winners Feb 18 but I still don know what happened. My JAVA-fu were good according to IBM, but I still didn got any notification about who won.
    BTW, I didn need to code JAVA at all, just use a IBM tutorial-game as example and soved without programing :)

  • List of projects (Score:4, Informative)

    by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @06:36PM (#11783232) Journal
    AIX Toolbox - http://sf.net/projects/aixtoolbox/

    Bluetooth ad-hoc network simulator - http://sf.net/projects/bluehoc/

    Dynamic Probe Class Library - http://sf.net/projects/dpcl/

    Journaled File System - http://sf.net/projects/jfs/

    IBM Jikes Compiler for the Java Language - http://sf.net/projects/jikes/

    Jikes RVM - http://sf.net/projects/jikesrvm/

    Java POS Config Loader - http://sf.net/projects/jposloader/

    Toolbox for Java/JTOpen - http://sf.net/projects/jt400/

    openCryptoki - http://sf.net/projects/opencryptoki/

    LTC Linux Kernel Performance Project - http://sf.net/projects/linuxperf/

    LSID (Life Science Identifier) - http://sf.net/projects/lsid/

    Memory Expansion Technology - http://sf.net/projects/mxt/

    OpenSSH on AIX - http://sf.net/projects/openssh-aix/

    Standards Based Linux Instrumentation - http://sf.net/projects/sblim/

    UDDI4J Java Class Library - http://sf.net/projects/uddi4j/

    Web Services Description Language for Java -
    http://sf.net/projects/wsdl4j/

    ACP Modem (Mwave) Driver for Linux - http://sf.net/projects/acpmodem/

    International Components for Unicode - http://sf.net/projects/icu/

    Dynamic Probes - http://sf.net/projects/dprobes/

    TCL extension library for IBM Speech Manager Applications Programming
    Interface (SMAPI) - http://sf.net/projects/tclsmapi/

    TCK for JWSDL ( JWSDLTCK ) - http://sf.net/projects/jwsdltck/

    (from the SourceForge post on that @ http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=44 9291)

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