IBM Considers Opening Up Development

Jerry Cuomo, chief technology officer of IBM's WebSphere middleware suite, has recently stated for vunet.com in an interview at the IBM Impact 2007 conference that the company's intention regarding the future plans would be to open source its software development process.

"The reward of getting our information out there is going to be amazing and critical to the future of IBM's software," said Cuomo.

Cuomo showed himself optimistic with the idea, and he said that the company will encourage the lead engineers to start blogs on this matter. This will help them improve the features and technologies according to IBM customers' expectations and they can also consult with other developers. IBM stated that it intends to use the more open development process for some new software projects over this summer. Cuomo explained that the release of IBM software will not be made entirely under the open source stipulations but rather under a commercial license that should allow individuals to compile and test the code for free, also maintaining the charging license fees for commercial deployment purposes.

"My stress is not so much on the licensing, but on how we conduct ourselves. It is more about the social side of software development," Cuomo said.

IBM is one of the first vendors to release its source code to the general public, after Sun Microsystems, which has released its middleware applications. So far, the software producers/ vendors were using the customer advisory boards and beta program, in order to find out if a certain product meets the client's exigencies, needs improvements or new features additions. IBM hopes this initiative will bring them closer to its customers and also create a better support relationship with them, as they will be able to find solutions to their problems more easily. Cuomo also claims that this innovative project will come as a safer alternative to the older practice where the customers are confronted with new features only after a product has been launched, fact that sometimes lead to failures.