The Linux Foundation | 17 December 2020
SAN FRANCISCO, December 17, 2020 – The Open Mainframe Project (OMP), an open source initiative that enables collaboration across the mainframe community to develop shared tool sets and resources, today welcomes Tessia, a tool that automates and simplifies the installation, configuration and testing of Linux systems running on the Z platform, to its ecosystem. Additionally, HCL Technologies and Red Hat join the project to strengthen their commitment to open source mainframe technologies.
“Open Mainframe Project has experienced record growth this year in terms of membership and projects,” said John Mertic, Director of Program Management at the Linux Foundation. “We look forward to strengthening our role as the number one resource for programs that advance the technology and training for the mainframe, especially with new members HCL and Red Hat who will expand our leadership and expertise.”
OMP Projects Increase by 1500 Percent Since Launch
When Open Mainframe Project was launched in 2015 by The Linux Foundation, there was one open source project under its wing that helped advance mainframe technology. Today, OMP has become an umbrella project that is home to 16 different open source projects including a COBOL Working Group and a Zowe Conformance Program. This is a 1500 percent increase over time.
Today, Tessia joins ADE, Ambitus, ATOM, CBT Tape, COBOL Training Program, Feilong, GenevaERS, Mainframe Open Education, Mentorship, Polycephaly, Software Discovery Tool, TerseDecompress, Zowe and Zorow as projects led by the Open Mainframe community.
Tessia, an open source project for Z resource management and automated installation of Linux distribution, manages relationships between Z datacenter resources and allocates them to specific projects and users according to a role-based schema. Using these resources, Tessia can be included into existing pipelines and with pre-release distributions and drive faster release cycles and adoption of new technologies. Additionally, it enables developers to effortlessly bring up their environments or try out new releases before migration. In general, the mission of the new project improves experience with Linux on Z, which in turn facilitates faster adoption of open source on Z platform.
The OMP Ecosystem Increases by 225 Percent
The Open Mainframe Project, which launched with 12 founding members, is now comprised of 41 business and academic organizations including the newest members HCL Technologies and Red Hat. HCL is a leading global technology company with three main businesses including IT and Business Services (ITBS), Engineering and R&D Services (ERS) and HCL Software. HCL Software develops IBM mainframe software products as an IBM IP Partner as well as developing HCL-branded mainframe software products.
Red Hat, which is now a subsidiary of OMP Platinum member IBM, has a long history of building and supporting products and solutions from open source projects and giving back to those communities.
The new members will collaborate on vendor-neutral open source projects with the mission of building community and adoption of open source on the mainframe. The project strives to build an inclusive community through investment in open source projects and programs, career development, and events that provide opportunities for the mainframe community to collaborate and create sustainability.
To celebrate its 5th anniversary, Open Mainframe Project hosted its inaugural Open Mainframe Summit event in September. More than 385 seasoned professionals, developers, students and leaders from 175 companies attended the virtual conference to share best practices, discuss hot topics, and network with like-minded individuals who are passionate about the mainframe industry. Learn more about the event and the audience statistics in this blog.
Momentum for Open Mainframe Projects
As an umbrella, the Open Mainframe Project hosts projects that expand training the next generation of mainframers or how modern mainframe technology integrates with existing systems. Through the vendor-neutral governance structure, OMP invites developers and members worldwide to participate in the open source community. The community’s passionate and talent has helped move several of the Open Mainframe Projects to important milestones including:
Zowe, an open source software framework for the mainframe that strengthens integration with modern enterprise applications, has released version 1.17 with some notable features and enhancements. Learn more in the release notes.
Polycephaly, a set of Java and Groovy classes that enables building z/OS® source code files with Jenkins and Git, now offers developers an opportunity to choose their IDEs to use, including the popular Open Source Eclipse. Learn more in this blog.
The annual Open Mainframe Project Mentorship program, which has helped more than 40 students learn more and gain experience with Linux, open source, and mainframes, welcomed 11 new mentees in May. These mentees were paired with mentors from OMP member organizations such as IBM, Rocket Software, SUSE, Vicom Infinity, and Zoss Team LLC for four months and delivered a presentation at the Linux Foundation’s Open Source Summit Europe. The videos can be found here.
Students interested in participating in the 2021 Open Mainframe Project mentorship program can join a webinar on January 12th, 2021 at 10:00 am US Eastern Time to learn more about the program and projects participating. Register here for this webinar.
About the Open Mainframe Project
The Open Mainframe Project is intended to serve as a focal point for deployment and use of Linux and Open Source in a mainframe computing environment. With a vision of Open Source on the Mainframe as the standard for enterprise class systems and applications, the project’s mission is to build community and adoption of Open Source on the mainframe by eliminating barriers to Open Source adoption on the mainframe, demonstrating value of the mainframe on technical and business levels, and strengthening collaboration points and resources for the community to thrive. Learn more about the project at https://www.openmainframeproject.org.
About The Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.
The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
###