IBM’s new romance
A year after it’s unsuccesful attempt to woo Sun into opensourcing Java, IBM is bolstering it’s support of Open Source and turns to PHP.
IBM’s been really busy on the Open Source front lately; in a long awaited move, after the unprecedented opening up of 500 patents for free use by Open Source developers last month, IBM is now opensourcing 30 of it’s Alphaworks projects with Sourceforge.
IBM also announced yesterday the formation of a partnership with Zend Technologies, developers of PHP, to create a bundle which includes IBM’s Cloudscape-embedded database and Zend’s PHP development tools. Cloudscape itself was opensourced last August, when IBM donated 500.000 lines of code to the Apache Derby project. CNET News reports:
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 standardization 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.”
For his part, [IBM's vice president of emerging technology, Rod] Smith(*) said that Java and PHP can be used for different tasks and said that IBM remains committed to Java.
In a show of masterful timing typical of the new Big Blue, this barrage of funky love for PHP comes exactly one year to the day after IBM’s famous open letter to Sun, urging them to opensource Java. No hints from anonymous execs are nessecary; for anyone who can read between the lines, it’s readily apparent what IBM’s latest moves indicate. The company who engaged in a huge switch to Linux and Java in recent years is fed up with Sun’s insistence to keep Java in an armlock and is considering another switch of it’s web development efforts, this time to PHP. Even if this is just a part-bluff, part-diversification strategy on the part of IBM, Java stands to lose considerable mindshare from developers fleeing the floundering ship .NET.
IBM is still commited to Linux, in light of the unraveling SCO lawsuit (only SCO itself is unraveling any faster), as last week’s unveiling of a plan to invest $100M to support it’s Workplace software on Linux desktops shows. It’s support for Java, by comparison, seems token. IBM’s partnership with Zend apparently includes setting up a new developerWorks subsite devoted to PHP. developerworks is a major locus of developer-oriented article publishing, rivalled only by O’Reillynet in activity and diversity of topics covered. Until recently, Java was the only programming language allocated a subsite, with material on PHP, Python, Perl and others relegated to a common Open Source subsite. IBM was experimenting with all these languages, but recent articles detailing how to connect PHP to Derby and Cloudscape had made it obvious that PHP was on IBM’s good graces.
PS: Groklaw features an excellent piece of comment comedy, on the last episode of the SCO NASDAQ delisting saga.
(*) author of last year’s aforementioned open letter
