IBM ups open source efforts

IBM Software is contributing some 30 projects to SourceForge.net, a US repository of open source code and related material.

The software group also said it would expand its developerWorks website with training in PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), a popular open-source programming language for creating web pages, and other popular technologies.

It was also working with Zend Technologies on a new developerWorks subsite devoted to PHP.

This partnership gave "the scripting crowd" an IBM integrated data capability that was also an open source repository, said Dana Gardner, analyst with US-based Yankee Group.

"They could take the data direction toward IBM and DB2, but also have the option of remaining more purely open source. It points up how to play in both open source and commercial [spaces].

"IBM seems to get this and is catering to the build and buy crowd -- not just build or buy."

IBM plans to push a Voice Tools project also backed by Hewlett Packard, SBC and VoiceGenie at a US conference next week.

Kathy Mandelstein, director of developer relations for IBM Software, said the goal was to ease creation of voice-enabled enterprise applications. IBM was submitting speech markup editors towards this end.

A series of Eclipse plug-ins to help developers link into IBM Cloudscape or Apache Derby databases would also be available from developerWorks.

Cloudscape and Derby are based on IBM/Informix's Cloudscape code, but Apache is an open-source version.

IBM was also posting Web Tools for Eclipse on alphaworks. Those tools promise to cut web application development time.

Mandelstein said IBM had already donated US$40 million in code to open source efforts. The Eclipse framework had supported more than 30 million downloads since 2001.

BEA Systems has pledged to support the Eclipse framework in the next version of WebLogic Workshop. Borland and Sybase also increased their involvement in an Eclipse foundation.