SOME I.B.M. SOFTWARE TOOLS TO BE PUT IN PUBLIC DOMAIN Issue: Open Source I.B.M. plans to announce today that it is placing $40 million of its software tools in the public domain as the first step toward founding an open-source organization for developers. The move is the latest step in International Business Machines embrace of the open-source software model, in which programmers around the world share software code for joint development and debugging. The new open-source organization, called Eclipse, will focus on the programming tools used to build applications and other software. More than 150 software companies, from Linux distributors like Red Hat and SuSE to applications developers like Rational and Bow Street, are lined up to join the Eclipse community. I.B.M. considers it a worthwhile investment to place in the public domain software tools that it spent $40 million to develop, seeing the move as one that further undermines the leading operating system suppliers, like Microsoft. [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Steve Lohr] (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/05/technology/05OPEN.html) (requires registration) -- Janina Sajka, Director Technology Research and Development Governmental Relations Group American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) Email: janina at afb.net Phone: (202) 408-8175 Chair, Accessibility SIG Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF) http://www.openebook.org Will electronic books surpass print books? Read our white paper, Surpassing Gutenberg, at http://www.afb.org/ebook.asp Download a free sample Digital Talking Book edition of Martin Luther King Jr's inspiring "I Have A Dream" speech at http://www.afb.org/mlkweb.asp Learn how to make accessible software at http://www.afb.org/accessapp.asp
