OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/19868/IBM_May_Open_Source_DB2 Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:36:29 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com "IBM lead OSS"??? http://osnews.com/thread?318724 http://osnews.com/thread?318724 Sun is the company that contributes most to open source. Not IBM. Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kebabbert) Comments RE: "IBM lead OSS"??? http://osnews.com/thread?318726 http://osnews.com/thread?318726 No, Red Hat is that company. Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kragil) Comments RE[2]: "IBM lead OSS"??? http://osnews.com/thread?318729 http://osnews.com/thread?318729
No, Red Hat is that company.


Counted by lines of code and human years Sun wins there with a large margin, since they have opensourced OpenOffice.org, OpenSolaris, OpenJDK, and others.

Have a look at this report (page 51) for statistics:
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/ict/policy/doc/2006-11-20-flossimpac...

IBM seems to come in second, Red Hat third. Of course, there are other possible measures as well, such as community participation.Edited 2008-06-17 10:35 UTC Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (danieldk) Comments Open-Source DB2... Opportunity to right the wrongs http://osnews.com/thread?318744 http://osnews.com/thread?318744 I've worked with DB2 both on Linux and Mainframe, and there are some little details that I would very much like to fix :o)

For example, on DB2 on the Mainframe, there are some some annoyance regarding error messages (or lack of). DB2 just throws you 3 hexadecimal numbers separated with semi-commas and hope that you will open the documentation by yourself to find out what it is instead of just giving the bloody message right away. Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (shadow_x99) Comments RE[3]: "IBM lead OSS"??? http://osnews.com/thread?318745 http://osnews.com/thread?318745 Is this really important to know which company contributed more? I mean, if Sun and IBM want to compare their respective e-peen that's their business...

On the other hand, having a strong enterprise-class database open-sourced, that's interesting news. Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (shadow_x99) Comments Dead story http://osnews.com/thread?318750 http://osnews.com/thread?318750 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9970262-16.html

IBM is not Open Sourcing anything. Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Windows Sucks) Comments RE: Dead story http://osnews.com/thread?318769 http://osnews.com/thread?318769
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9970262-16.html

IBM is not Open Sourcing anything.


Thanks. That's not surprising. IBM knows how to use people and technology to benefit only its self. Some how people think IBM is a friend to the open source community. It only does what it needs to to sell its products. Period. Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Arun) Comments Who is this person to speak for the headquarters? http://osnews.com/thread?318775 http://osnews.com/thread?318775 I'd be really surprised to see IBM, on the 25th anniversary of DB2, talk about moving it to open source. If anything, they'd be more likely to throw Informix out there, since they bought it years ago to gain ground in UNIX databases.

Besides all that, DB2 (wasn't it DB/2?), is likely too messy to just dump on the open source world with all of its various platforms. I could see how they might consider the desktop version as a target since they really don't sell that anymore. Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bousozoku) Comments RE[2]: Dead story http://osnews.com/thread?318782 http://osnews.com/thread?318782 Agree with you there. We use TSOM (Tivoli Security Operations Manager) and IBM announced that future versions of TSOM will no longer support MySQL, and they expect you to buy a DB2 license as part of the upgrade or go to Oracle. Nothing like jamming it down your throat if you can't sell it. Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Robert Escue) Comments RE: Open-Source DB2... Opportunity to right the wrongs http://osnews.com/thread?318807 http://osnews.com/thread?318807 Even if they would opensource DB2 (which they are not going to at the moment), I very much doubt they would opensource the mainframe version too. Unfortunately, there is almost no opensource for the mainframes (and hence no opensource community - Hercules folks being one notable exception), as the platform is largely unknown among young people. Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (asgard) Comments RE[2]: Dead story http://osnews.com/thread?318808 http://osnews.com/thread?318808 You are right about that They know how to make MONEY! Money! Money!

At least they don't get on my nerves as much as MS though! LOL! Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Windows Sucks) Comments Awesome http://osnews.com/thread?318814 http://osnews.com/thread?318814 I can't wait to use it on open source AIX. Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jwwf) Comments RE[2]: Dead story http://osnews.com/thread?318828 http://osnews.com/thread?318828 The same could be said about Sun. Or is Sun's open sourcing for altruistic reasons only? Sun isn't out to make a profit you say? That sure explains a lot.

At least IBM's comments are far friendlier than those Sun used to make about open source / Free software.

But how soon we forget... Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jjgorsky) Comments RE[3]: Dead story http://osnews.com/thread?318833 http://osnews.com/thread?318833 The key word here is "used to". Sun "used to" talk bad about OSS. Yes. Everyone agrees. Even a Sun fanboy as me.

But things have changed. Scott McNealy is no longer the CEO. McNealy belonged to Gates, Ellison, Ballmer, generation of CEO. The new CEO is doing wonders for OSS. He is not belonging to the old dinosaur CEOs. Who could have thought that SUN would open source their crown jewels and give away? Mac OS X is using ZFS now. And FreeBSD. etc. It is there, for everyone to download.

SUN contributes most to OSS nowadays. At Scott McNealy era, no OSS contributions were hardly made. McNealy was a... controversial man. But the new CEO isnt.

SUN is a new company now. Everything is changed. Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kebabbert) Comments RE[4]: "IBM lead OSS"??? http://osnews.com/thread?318834 http://osnews.com/thread?318834 SHADOW,

it is important, because if IBM claims the lead OSS, then they are claiming wrongly. We need to correct false statements. Right? Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kebabbert) Comments RE[3]: Dead story http://osnews.com/thread?318841 http://osnews.com/thread?318841 Wow, that's pretty lame and childish. Nothing like modding down the truth because it paints the "so called" Open Source friendly IBM in a not too flattering light. Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Robert Escue) Comments RE[3]: "IBM lead OSS"??? http://osnews.com/thread?318854 http://osnews.com/thread?318854
Counted by lines of code and human years Sun wins there with a large margin, since they have opensourced OpenOffice.org, OpenSolaris, OpenJDK, and others.


The Sun fanbois on this site want to blast IBM for its self-interested motives regarding open source, but all you have to do is look at these three examples to see that Sun is the same:

OpenOffice.org - product acquisition. Couldn't make money off of StarOffice, so they tried to gain competitive position by offering it as open source.

OpenSolaris - Regardless of technical merit, Solaris was having its lunch eaten by Linux. Open-Sourcing Solaris was a bold move aimed at removing the ROI argument for switching from Solaris to Linux.

OpenJDK - Sun dragged its feet for years on Open-Sourcing Java, after repeated requests by IBM (arguing that there is no competitive advantage to be had in core JDK technology - a fair argument). After the Harmony project started gaining momentum and with open source runtimes for .Net available, Sun had little choice but to Open-Source Java.

Those who argue that Sun is a bigger friend of open source than IBM conveniently forget that Sun's motivations, as a publicly-traded company, are the same as IBM's. All decisions must be made to deliver greater value to the shareholders. Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rdean400) Comments RE[5]: "IBM lead OSS"??? http://osnews.com/thread?318876 http://osnews.com/thread?318876 I agree that IBM auto-proclaiming itself as the undisputed leader is ridiculous, but I certainly agree that IBM is a leader in terms of contributions. Now the discussion is about which is the biggest contributors is not really important as long as YOU know the truth.

IBM can brag as much as they want about their contributions... At least they do contribute contrary to many smaller corporation who consume open-source software (BSD-License and/or Apache License and/or LGPL) without contributing a single line of code. Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (shadow_x99) Comments Wow http://osnews.com/thread?318883 http://osnews.com/thread?318883 Hear that? it was the sound of postre dying.

Seriously though, kudos to IBM if they do this. Other then AIX, can't think of anything else they own that would be more useful as open source.Edited 2008-06-18 00:57 UTC Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (google_ninja) Comments Comment by katsnelson http://osnews.com/thread?318909 http://osnews.com/thread?318909 You can find more on this topic at FreeDB2.com

Not sure if Chris Livesey was misquoted. DB2 Express-C, the free DBMS, is not "light" database at least not if "light" is the description of the function. DB2 Express-C (http://freeDB2.com) is "full function" product that is offered using the "open source business model" but it is not open source.
On the "light" point ... DB2 Express-C has ALL of the function of the other DB2 editions. Actually it includes some additional functions such as pureXML and all of it absolutely free. Also, it is free not just for development or use internally but DB2 Express-C can be included in commercial products at no charge.
On the subject of "open source". DB2 is not open source and many of our customers appreciate this fact because their procurement processes prevent them from acquiring open source products due to intellectual property concerns. The other often voiced concern is lack of a "single throat to choke" i.e. commercially available support. This is why DB2 Express-C implements "open source business model" i.e. while the product is free it is available with optional low cost support that is delivered by IBM (not third parties). The cost of this optional support is the same as what MySQL charges for a similar offering ($2995/server/year). More information at http://www.ibm.com/db2/express.

Leon Katsnelson
Program Director, IBM Data ManagementEdited 2008-06-18 08:23 UTC Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (katsnelson) Comments RE[4]: "IBM lead OSS"??? http://osnews.com/thread?318997 http://osnews.com/thread?318997 I dont know about the other things, but I know that Java took long time because SUN had to prove that they owned each line of code. And that took long time and hard work. Still there are third party stuff that SUN can not open in Java. Same problem with OpenSolaris. Solaris can not be opened at will, because of lots of third party code. OpenSolaris has no third party code in it.

And also SUNs attempt to standardize Java didnt went well, because Microsoft stopped it. Motivation? "It it not good that a single company have that much influence on a standard" (OOXML anyone?)
http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2007/09/microsoft-conde.html


And still SUN did some bad things in the past, with Scott McNealy. But hey, all those CEOs (Gates, Ballmer, Ellison, etc) have the same mentality. McNealy is no different from those. But this new CEO is totally different. He opens everything and gives it away. Which other big company has opened it's crown jewels? No one. Sun is the only one doing this. And giving everything away. This was unthinkable of, with McNealy as CEO. But things change. Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kebabbert) Comments RE[5]: "IBM lead OSS"??? http://osnews.com/thread?319065 http://osnews.com/thread?319065 It's taken a long time because Sun dragged its feet before it even seriously entertained the notion of open sourcing Java, arguing that it would encourage forks (a fair point, but not unmanageable). Thu, 19 Jun 2008 03:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rdean400) Comments