Open Mainframe Project Redefines Developer Experience on the Mainframe with AI

New Projects Zorse and zopen community Aim to Boost Productivity for Mainframers 

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — IBM TechXchange — October 21, 2024 – The Open Mainframe Project, an open source initiative that enables collaboration across the mainframe community to develop shared tool sets and resources, today announces two new projects that will redefine developer experience on the mainframe. Zorse is a new open source project that will provide the resources to train and evaluate large language models (LLMs) for mainframe programming languages. The zopen community is a vibrant global open source community that works together to expand the availability and development of open source tools for z/OS, making it a first-class modern platform.

Zorse

Specifically with mainframes, LLMs perform comparatively poorly at reading and writing mainframe code because there is very little data for them to train on. Zorse aims to solve these challenges by collecting large, production-quality datasets to improve LLM’s ability to understand and write mainframe code. The new project will also provide an evaluation tool to measure the performance of LLMs on mainframe programming tasks. Ultimately, this will help build Artificial Intelligence (AI) coding tools that will boost the productivity of mainframe software engineers.

“AI is revolutionizing how organizations utilize mainframes by enabling real-time optimization, predictive maintenance, and enhanced data analytics,” said John Mertic, Executive Director of Open Mainframe Project. “Now under our umbrella, Zorse is the perfect complementary project to the COBOL Programming Course and COBOL Check. Together, our projects will offer an opportunity to blend education and practical testing for modernizing and maintaining legacy systems.”

The zopen community

Newly contributed to the Open Mainframe Project, the zopen community is a global community dedicated to making a modern collection of popular open source tools available for z/OS. They aim to make the platform more accessible to modern developers and organizations embracing open source technology. With more than 200 projects and a thriving ecosystem, it will shape the future of z/OS UNIX development. 

The zopen community accelerates modernization efforts on the mainframe, making it easier for companies to adapt z/OS to the latest development standards, especially with the growing adoption of DevOps and CI/CD pipelines. This community also helps reduce the learning curve and complexity of z/OS environments by providing ready-to-use, familiar open source tools, improving developer productivity and enabling faster deployments.

"The zopen community is focused on driving z/OS to the forefront of open source by empowering users to contribute, collaborate, and collectively shape its future, making it a more modern platform for everyone,” said Igor Todorovski, Chair of the zopen community and z/OS Open Source Development Lead at IBM. “Joining the Open Mainframe Project allows us to offer these resources to a broader open source ecosystem that will strengthen the developer experience.”

Other Project Milestones

Open Mainframe Project has achieved other recent milestones including:

• The launch of the Zowe LongTerm Support V3, which continues to make its mark for mission-critical applications and data processing. Zowe LTS V3 increases product durability, stability and security with the support of a large open source community and a Conformance Program. Learn more about the features in this technical blog.
• The Open Mainframe Project Mentorship Program aims to engage and support students and early-career professionals in gaining hands-on experience with mainframe technologies. The program pairs mentees with experienced mentors from across the mainframe community to work on real-world projects, often focusing on open source contributions or advancing mainframe technologies. This summer, 14 mentees across the globe participated in the program. You can read their experiences and watch their final videos here.
• For the first-time ever, Open Mainframe Project will have a track at the GSE UK in-person annual conference, happening on November 4-7 in London. Check out the schedule here.

For more about Open Mainframe Project, visit https://www.openmainframeproject.org/.

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.