The
IBM Linux Technology Center (LTC) is an organization focused on development for the
Linux kernel and related
open-source software
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...
projects. In 1999, IBM created the LTC to combine its software developers interested in Linux and other open-source software into a single organization. Much of the LTC's early effort was focused on making "all of its server platforms Linux friendly." The LTC collaborated with the Linux community to make Linux run optimally on processor architectures such as
x86
x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was intr ...
,
mainframe,
PowerPC, and
Power ISA. In recent years, the focus of the LTC has expanded to include several other open source initiatives.
With about 185 IBM employees working for the LTC in 1999, this number grew steadily to about 600 in 2006, 300 of whom worked full-time on Linux.
In December 2000, IBM claimed to have invested approximately one billion US dollars in Linux by the year 2000, and to currently have about 1,500 developers working on the alternative operating system. It announced that it would invest a similar amount in 2001 and also build the largest Linux-based supercomputer for Royal Dutch/Shell Oil. While most of the money was invested in Linux development, some of it went into others, mainly
AIX
Aix or AIX may refer to:
Computing
* AIX, a line of IBM computer operating systems
*An Alternate Index, for a Virtual Storage Access Method Key Sequenced Data Set
* Athens Internet Exchange, a European Internet exchange point
Places Belgi ...
.
The following year, senior vice president Bill Zeitler claimed to have recouped most of this spending in the first year through the sale of software and systems.
[Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: IBM and Linux – What’s really happening, https://www.linux.com/news/ibm-and-linux-whats-really-happening/]
Details
Developers in the LTC contribute to various open-source projects such as:
*
Kernel-based Virtual Machine
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a virtualization module in the Linux kernel that allows the kernel to function as a hypervisor. It was merged into the mainline Linux kernel in version 2.6.20, which was released on February 5, 2007. KV ...
(KVM) on x86 and Power systems, including Kimchi
*
Apache Hadoop
*
OpenStack
OpenStack is a free, open standard cloud computing platform. It is mostly deployed as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) in both public and private clouds where virtual servers and other resources are made available to users. The software pl ...
*
OpenPOWER Foundation
The OpenPOWER Foundation is a collaboration around Power ISA-based products initiated by IBM and announced as the "OpenPOWER Consortium" on August 6, 2013. IBM is opening up technology surrounding their Power Architecture offerings, such as proc ...
*
GNU toolchain
The GNU toolchain is a broad collection of programming tools produced by the GNU Project. These tools form a toolchain (a suite of tools used in a serial manner) used for developing software applications and operating systems.
The GNU toolchain pl ...
*
Open source standards
LTC is a worldwide team with main locations in Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Israel, and the United States.
References
External links
*
* Joe Barr, 2001
Inside IBM's Linux Technology Center
IBM
Linux organizations
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