IBM continues to bring more and more industry standard and open source technologies to IBM i. While IBM i has its own (easy-to-learn) interfaces and operating system implementation, it also has an extremely rich set of features that are industry standard as well as open source.
This blog post is obsolete now that 5733-OPS has been deprecated. It is left here for historical purposes.
IBM started adding industry standard features to the system long ago–we’ve had a *nix file system for years (we call it the IFS). We’ve had POSIX programming interfaces for years. We’ve had an AIX runtime environment (PASE) for years. We’ve had support for the NetServer for years. We’re had an open source Web server (Apache) for years. We’ve had SQL, Java and PHP for years. Of course, there’s more–TCP/IP, SSH, SSL, FTP, Telnet, etc. … –the list is long. The truth of the matter is that in today’s world, you must embrace industry standards simply to exist.
What has made this so successful is that these are not “Do it Yourself” add-ons IBM–takes the time to incorporate these industry standards and open source solutions so they are integrated in the way that i clients expect. You can install and support them with LPPs and PTFs. You can work with jobs running these functions as you’d expect to be able to work with an IBM i job. These technologies can interact with traditional IBM i functions as well as DB2 for i.
To help make the delivery of open source solutions more friendly to the IBM i community, there is now a new licensed program option–5733OPS, Open Source for IBM i. This new LPO provides a way for IBM to deliver open source. The IBM i developerWorks page on Open Source Technologies is where you will find IBM publishing updates regarding this new option.
The first open source offering to be provided in this new LPO is node.js. Node.js is an open source project based on Google Chrome V8 Engine. Node.js provides a platform for server-side JavaScript applications running without browsers. Tim Rowe previously wrote a blog on Node.js on IBM I (link is broken) and this blog also reviewed 5733-OPS and how to get it.
The wonderful thing about open source on i is that it can bring solutions to the platform without having to build them from scratch. It allows for anyone with skills on these technologies to be able to use that same knowledge on i. And that’s a very good thing.
This blog post was edited to fix broken links on April 12, 2020.
This blog post was originally published on IBMSystemsMag.com and is reproduced here by permission of IBM Systems Media.