IBM Jazz Edges Closer To Open Source

hhavensteincw writes "IBM is molding its Jazz technology, which helps software development teams collaborate, in the image of its popular Eclipse open source community. IBM said that today's move to open access to its Jazz.net portal to anyone to peruse its code, access bug lists, etc. puts it on the path to completely open-source the Jazz technology."

Comments

Not much information in article... see videos

[compumike]

I love when I can actually RTFA and still have no idea what the product is. So I found these videos of Jazz which should be helpful. But this is one of those "platform" things where they aren't actually selling anything... But my interpretation is that they're essentially trying to put together a code repository (ala Subversion) with Bugtraq with mailing list with instant message.

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Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

Re:Not much information in article... see videos

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhat, but not quite. This isn't them specifically growing out of the sourceforge.net/open source community, I think this is them trying to go for the "Behind The Firewall" versions of Sourceforge.

Rational's been getting its ass kicked by SourceForge Enterprise Edition and Collabnet Enterprise Edition (in addition to JIRA and GForge) for a while now. While the two big players, SourceForge Enterprise Edition (used to be owned by VA, er, SourceForge.com) and CollabNet Enterprise Edition were bringing the Rational and Star Offices to SFEE and CEE, I think IBM woke up and realized that there are a lot of new things.

CollabNet bought SourceForge Enterprise Edition in April, and it seems like that company is going to go down in flames. If you add on top of SFEE and CEE, they have some Virtualization software that isn't quite hotel management software, and some reporting software that you'd be better off using Jasper or Crystal reports for. Yes, there are eclipse plugins for SFEE and CEE, but, this is taking it completely a step further -- bringing the product lifecycle inside of the IDE, from conceptualization to User stories to coding to defect tracking and releasing software. It also looks like IBM's solved the ability to cluster, something CEE and SFEE haven't been able to do.

It looks promising, to say the least.

What is Jazz

[MrCopilot]

Everyone is asking what it is. When did we get so lazy?

What is Jazz?

Developing software in a team is much like playing an instrument in a band. Both require a balance of collaboration and virtuosity. Jazz defines a vision for the way products can integrate to support this kind of collaborative work, and a technology platform to deliver on this vision.

Jazz is an IBM Rational project to build a scalable, extensible team collaboration platform for integrating work across the phases of the development lifecycle. We believe Jazz will help teams build software more effectively while making the software development activity more productive and enjoyable.

Jazz is a technology platform, not a product. Product offerings that are built on the Jazz platform will be able to leverage a rich set of capabilities for team-based software development and delivery. Rational Team Concert Express will be the first of a planned family of Rational Team Concert offerings built on Jazz technology.

http://jazz.net/pub/index.jsp

Most of us haven't heard of it because it has been in a closed private pilot program, now open to all of us.

Re:Wall street is waking up

[Benjamin T Miller]

No, IBM's stock went up 5 points on Monday because their expected earnings per share were $2.80, 20 cents higher than the predictions of analysts. It has absolutely nothing to do with this "latest news of their ever-increasing commitment to open source software." While you and I might care about businesses and open source, Wall Street has exactly one thing in mind: profit, and higher than expected profit caused their stock to go up.

Re:Did you know....

[Arnonymous Coward]

I thought this was a troll to, until I did a quick search and found out they were correct.

'Jazz' is not a bad word now, but almost certainly is of extremely low origin, referring to copulation before it was applied to music, dancing, and nonsense (i.e., all that Jazz). The vulgar word was in general currency in dance halls thirty years or more ago" (Clay Smith, Etude 9/24). "According to Raven I. McDavid Sr. of Greenville, S.C., the 1919 announcement of the first 'Jazz band' to play in Columbia, where he was then serving in the state legislature, inspired feelings of terror among the local Baptists such as what might have been aroused by a personal appearance of Yahweh. Until that time 'Jazz' had never been heard in the Palmetto States except as a verb meaning to copulate" (H. L. Mencken, The American Language Raven I. McDavid Jr. 1963). "She never stepped out of line once in all the years we been teamed up. I can't sell her on jazzing the chump now" (William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley 1946).

http://www.apassion4jazz.net/etymology.html

Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_(word)#Etymology

what Jazz is about

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw a demo once. In a nutshell, Jazz is to team performance what Eclipse is to personal performance, it is a platform for collaboration tools. I think it started as an internal project of eclipse developers to better support the Eclipse development process. You can define and enforce your software process and good coding practices. A software process can be a heavyweight pocess a la RUP or a lightweight like XP or any custom process like the Eclipse Process. There are development process building blocks like plans, tasks, roles, versions, (nightly) builds, milestones, releases, bugs, etc.. It supports distributed (multi site) development. It has an embededd chat capablity that is process aware (e.g. drag and drop of references to bug reports, builds and code deltas). There is also a "dashboard" web application with project status screens and bug tracking.

Re:Well, guess what...

[Anonymous Coward]

Jazz isn't made by the Rational people. It's made by many of the same people responsible for Eclipse. I used to work with some of them, and I've seen bits and pieces of Jazz as it was under early development.

It looks very promising, especially for large organizations that currently cobble together a suite of collaborative tools by hand. The main promise of it is integration between all those different tools, which will be tighter and smoother than you can get when you use separate tools from separate vendors and try to glue them together into a workable process yourself.

Warning: TOS Bomb!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just wanted to sign up, but then I read the Terms of Usage, and there's quite a hitch: IBM can do anything with your source code - even use it in closed source products or sell it to somebody else

Quote, with own emphasis:

Contributory Licenses

By sending IBM or this Web site (including but not limited to by uploading, submitting or otherwise making available or contributing to IBM or this Web site) any information or material, you grant IBM an unrestricted, worldwide, non-exclusive, irrevocable, perpetual, royalty-free, fully paid up, license to use, make, have made, reproduce, display, perform, publish, upload, post, modify, create derivative works from, transmit, distribute, sell, offer for sale and sublicense or otherwise transfer those materials or information or their modifications, and to authorize third parties to do any, some or all of the foregoing including, but not limited to, sublicensing others to do any some or all of the foregoing indefinitely. You represent and warrant that to your knowledge, you have sufficient rights in those materials or information to grant these rights and licenses. You also agree that IBM and its sub-licensees as described above are free to use any ideas, concepts, know-how or techniques that you send us for any purpose.

Further, to the extent that you have made your identity known by posting, uploading, submitting otherwise using the Jazz.net Web site as intended, you give permission to IBM to publicly disclose your name or otherwise publicize the fact that you submitted materials or other information to us, and IBM may do so without the need of further notice to you.

Notwithstanding any other terms in this agreement, IBM is under no obligation to use, post or upload any contribution you make to this Web site or otherwise, and IBM may remove any posting or upload you make at IBM's sole discretion.