IBM to Develop OpenOffice.org with Sun
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After a few years of flirting with the idea of developing its own suite of applications, perhaps under the Lotus banner, that support the OASIS OpenDocument format, IBM has decided to join Sun Microsystems in the development of OpenOffice.org, the principal open source ODF applications suite.
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IBM on Thursday will announce the release of a free tools bundle for Eclipse to make it easier to deploy Java applications on Linux.
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Just a week after IBM joined the OpenOffice.org open-source community, the company released its own version of the group's free desktop applications suite -- calling it Lotus Symphony.
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(InfoWorld) - IBMÂ on Monday introduced new services, dubbed Open Client, designed to make it easier for customers to run its Lotus collaboration software on a mixture of Windows and Linux desktop operating systems. The Open Client services will include desktop management and application migration support and advice on best practices. Red Hat and its main Linux distribution rival, Novell, will provide operating system services. In coming up with the services, IBM applied lessons it learned during its own deployment of desktop operating systems, notably Red Hat's Enterprise Linux Workstation software, according to Jeff Smith, vice president, open source and Linux middleware for IBM. "It's about applying the right technology to the right user," he said. Roles-based computing is a concept most software vendors are touting, especially IBM's main groupware rival Microsoft. With Open Client and other initiatives, IBM's now seeking to differentiate itsÂ Lotus collaboration softwareÂ from Microsoft's Exchange offering by stressing its multiplatform capabilities. Microsoft doesn't provide support for Linux. IBM has also been slow to come out with versions of its Notes client and Sametime instant-messaging software that can run natively on the open-source operating system. The vendor onlyÂ announced native Linux support for NotesÂ and Sametime in July and August of last year respectively. Previously, users had to rely on Web clients or software emulation. It became easier for IBM to offer native Linux support once it moved to new base versions of its software, including Notes and Sametime. The new versions run on a middleware layer from the open-source Eclipse Foundation, which IBM calls the Eclipse Rich Client Platform, Smith said. Open Client covers Notes, Sametime, WebSphere Portal 6.0 for building portal applications and services accessible by a Web browser and Lotus Expeditor, an Eclipse-based client development platform for composite applications. IBM plans to add widen the scope of its Open Client services later this year to add in support for Apple's Macintosh operating system. The vendor also intends Open Client to include Lotus Notes 8, Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr, when they ship later this year. In IBM's internal deployment, the company created a single software stack of its collaboration software so that staff could integrate their Lotus applications running on Windows or Linux into IBM's enterprise infrastructure. About 5 percent of IBM's 329,373 work force, some 16,468 staff, are running Lotus software on Linux, up from the 5,000 employees involved last year in beta testing the new versions of the vendor's collaboration software. The staff running Lotus on Linux include software and hardware developers, chip designers, Linux support and marketing staff and research groups. Linux doesn't yet make sense for IBM business consultants who use a mobile device as their main computer. "The capabilities are there to support just about every workload," Smith said. "The difference is what effort is required to pull it all together." Running applications on Linux on mobile devices is still more challenging than on desktops or servers. IBM's due to talk more about Open Client on Wednesday and Thursday at the LinuxWorld OpenSolutions Summit in New York, Smith said. Â
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Ziff Davis - Sun Microsystems, with its StarOffice suite, and the open-source OpenOffice.org consider server-based applications as a way to boost security, portability and deployment.
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With an eye toward both consumer and enterprise needs, Sun Microsystems is reworking the plug-in architecture of Java in an upcoming update to Java Platform Standard Edition (SE) 6, company officials said Wednesday evening.Overall, Sun officials at a briefing in San Francisco stressed the company's new emphasis on not just the enterprise space but consumer systems as well, with the company extending Java and rich experiences to various devices.With the plug-in platform, a ground-up rewrite is under way, said Ken Russell, from the Java SE deployment team. "This will change how your poker game in [a] Web browser is run as well as your corporate app," Russell said.The new architecture is planned for inclusion in the upcoming beta of what is now being referred to as Java SE 6 Update N, due in December."Really, the defining feature of it is that it runs the applets in a separate process than the Web browser," Russell said.Features of the plug-in plan include improved scripting support and reliability. More powerful applications can be supported than in the past. Users will be able to tune an applet to run in a particular version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE); this will enable developers to target one JRE without having to change the behavior of any other applet. Testing also will be simplified.In addition, better backing will be offered for Windows Vista, including capabilities for signed applets. Support will be offered for Internet Explorer 6 and 7 browsers as well as for Firefox 3 alpha builds and the Firefox 2 browser. Platforms capable of running the plug-in include Solaris, Windows and Linux.Current plans call for the plug-in technology to be turned on via a switch in the Java control panel.Sun also delved into other features planned for Java SE 6 Update N."Update N is about fixing the consumer experience," with a more solid browser plug-in experience and a better installation experience, said Chet Haase, Java SE client architect. Sun also wants to better enable Java for rich Internet applications.A faster startup for Java is also planned. This is important in the Web ad and lightweight game space, Haase said. Also planned is inclusion of technology from a project called Quickstarter, which preloads disk cache to bolster performance of lightweight applications. Faster graphics is planned as well, as is Nimbus, which provides a new look and feel for Java Swing client systems.Haase also noted Sun's plan for the Java Kernel, which enables downloading just the parts of Java that are needed to run an application. While that application is running, the rest of the platform is downloaded.James Gosling, chief technology officer for the Sun client software group, reviewed plans for JavaFX, which is Sun's platform for building rich, consistent user experiences for a wide variety of devices and systems."JavaFX really is a marketing term that is sort of an umbrella for a set of activities," Gosling said. The platform covers consumer-facing technologies and features a services layer based on Java and a database, a presentation layer with HTTPD, and an edge device component, covering desktops to phones to TVs."This edge part of the universe -- this is what JavaFX is all about," said Gosling.Featured in JavaFX is JavaFX Mobile, which is a software stack for mobile phones; Java SE 6 Update N, also known as the consumer JRE; the JavaFX Script scripting language, and JavaFX designer and developer tools."[JavaFX Script is] a scripting language sort of in the sense of PHP [Hypertext Preprocessor] and Python and all the rest of them. But while those are focused at generating HTML from the presentation layer outward, JavaFX Script is really all about rich user interactions," Gosling said.
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Sun Microsystems has decided to offer support for the OpenOffice.org suite, charging $20 per user per year to companies that distribute the open-source software.
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Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday said that it is looking for ways to work more closely with developers of the Open Office open source project, while at the same time, apparently reserving the right to sue them, according to a legal agreement between Microsoft and Open Office's major sponsor, Sun Microsystems Inc., made public this week.
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BANGALORE, INDIA -- IBM Corp. has partnered with a computing and an educational institution in India to promote the development of open-source software in the region, the company said Thursday.
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InfoWorld - Cambridge, Mass. -- IBM and other parties are set to propose an open source systems management initiative for consideration by the Eclipse Foundation, with managing SOA a goal of the plan, an IBM official said at the EclipseWorld 2006 conference on Friday.
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IBM Corp. said Monday it will release as open source code some of its software for speech-enabling applications. The move is intended to spur development in the field and outflank rivals by making IBM's free technology the industry standard.
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Sun backs an EU standards push for interoperability between office software. Microsoft says it's already there.
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The OpenOffice.org project has turned four years old, celebrating its birthday on the anniversary of Sun's donation of StarOffice to the open source community. With 31 million downloads and counting, the free office suite has helped push for mainstream acceptance of open source software by offering an alternative to Microsoft's pricey Office System. OpenOffice.org 2.0 is set for release next spring, complete with an open equivalent to Microsoft Access.
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Presentate alla Conferenza di Berlino le novitÃ  della versione 2.0 e le strategie di marketing per la suite per ufficio open source che Ã¨ compatibile anche con Mac OS X. La comunitÃ  OpenOffice.org, la suite
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IBM said it is joining the OpenOffice.org community to collaborate on software development for the Open Document Format (ODF), an ISO standard that governs the creation, storage, and exchange of documents.
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IBM is developing a new, &quot;one-stop-shop&quot; product offering, Lotus Foundations, aimed at companies with five to 500 employees, it said Monday.Lotus Foundations will consist of on-premise software servers sold primarily through partners. IBM is also developing a set of accompanying Web-hosted services, now available in a beta version.The company plans to bundle Lotus Domino, file management, directory services, firewall, backup and productivity tools in the initial offering of Lotus Foundations. Customers who need more power will be able to bring on additional servers, according to IBM. The company&#39;s partner community will also be able to integrate their own applications into the core platform.The server software sold under Foundations will be autonomic or &quot;self-healing,&quot; and therefore appropriate for small companies without paid IT staffers, IBM said.Foundations will be the home of technology IBM acquired through its&#160;purchase last week of Net Integration Technologies. That deal is set to close later this year.&quot;Net Integration is a key part of our strategy here. That&#39;s why we bought them,&quot; said Mike Rhodin, general manager of Lotus, during a press conference Monday at IBM&#39;s Lotusphere show in Orlando, Florida.IBM did not release pricing information on Monday, but Rhodin indicated the company plans to compete vigorously for market share.&quot;Our intent as we price the Foundations offering, to be blunt, is to be very aggressive,&quot; Rhodin said. &quot;The total value we&#39;ll put around the solution is going to be pretty big for the customer and we&#39;re going to leave some room in there for the partner to make some money.&quot;The Web-hosted services, on the other hand, will focus on helping businesses collaborate with each other, such as through contact and file sharing, or online chat and Web meetings. Interested users can register for the beta test at bluehouse.lotus.com.The Bluehouse beta test represents a chance for IBM to fine-tune the economics of selling software as a service, according to Rhodin. &quot;You don&#39;t find a lot of profitable software-as-a-service companies. The business model is in evolution,&quot; he said. &quot;Our approach is going to be to work with partners and the marketplace to find out the best solution for them.&quot;Also Monday, IBM and SAP said they are codeveloping a software product under the codename &quot;Atlantic,&quot; which will integrate IBM&#39;s Lotus Notes collaboration and office productivity software with SAP&#39;s Business Suite.The Atlantic project represents a further deepening of the long-standing relationship between IBM and SAP.&quot;We think the timing is just right,&quot; Rhodin said. &quot;The timing for collaboration and business systems to come together is right now.&quot;The first release of Atlantic is expected to ship in the fourth quarter of this year, and will feature support for SAP workflows, reporting and analytics. It will also include the ability to use roles from within the Lotus Notes client, and tools for expanding these core capabilities, IBM said in a statement.
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(InfoWorld) - Companies have completed the first phase of a Microsoft-sponsored project to create software that can convert Microsoft Word documents between Open XML and Open Document Format for Office Applications file formats. The Open XML Translator is now available for download in version 1.0 from SourceForge.net, a site that acts as an online repository for open-source projects. The software also can be found on Microsoft's Web site here and here. Microsoft funded the work on the translator, but did not contribute any code to the project, said Jason Matusow, senior director of intellectual property and interoperability at Microsoft. The company provided architectural guidance and management to the project, he said. A French company called CleverAge contributed the code and built most of the Open XML Translator, while Aztecsoft in India and Dialogika in Germany did the quality assurance and testing. The Open XML Translator allows Microsoft Word documents based on Open XML to be translated into ODF and vice versa, Matusow said. Once downloaded, it can be used as a plug-in for Microsoft Office 2007, the documents of which are based on Open XML. Developers also can build it into software they are developing. The Open XML Translator for Word documents is the first phase of the project. The team is currently working on translation between ODF and Open XML for spreadsheets written in Microsoft Excel 2007 and presentations developed in Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, Matusow said. Much has been made of the fact that MicrosoftÂ did not provide native supportÂ in Microsoft Office 2007 for ODF, though it provides support for 30 other file formats and uses Open XML as the default document file format. Matusow defends that decision by saying Microsoft tries to meet its customers' wishes, and there was no customer demand for ODF -- largely supported by rivals IBM and Sun Microsystems -- when development on Office 2007 began. IBM and Sun both use ODF as the default file format in their own rivals to the Microsoft Office suite. "A standard is about a stack of paper -- market adoption is the ultimate driver of activity," Matusow said. "What gets built and used is the defining element. That's why we look at the customer discussion as being so important." However, government customers that may be required to use only industry-standard technologies in their IT infrastructure requested that Microsoft provide a way to translate between Open XML and ODF.Â ODF recently was approvedÂ by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as a global standard, while Open XML is awaiting approval. Matusow said the reason Microsoft let third parties be the primary creators and caretakers of the Open XML Translator is because of the input of government customers who wanted Microsoft to provide a free, open way to translate between ODF and Open XML -- one that was not strictly overseen by Microsoft but was more of a community effort. To its credit, Microsoft did try to include native support for another company's document format -- a standard implementation of Adobe Systems Inc.'s PDF -- in Office 2007, but Adobe balked at the idea and asked Microsoft to pull that support, which it did. Adobe recently submitted PDF to the ISO for global standardization, and Matusow said Microsoft would again be "open to conversation" with Adobe about including PDF as a native file format in a future version of Office.