International Business Machines Corp. said Tuesday it is offering one of its database program codes to the open source community.
IBM said that current programming code of Cloudscape, a database product written in Java programming language, will be given to nonprofit Apache Software Foundation that spearheads open source projects.
IBM estimated the value of its contribution to be about $85 million. The open source project will be called Derby.
Software written in Java can run on computers with Microsoft Windows as well as other operating systems.
"Our whole motivation is to accelerate more innovation," around Java, said Janet Perna, general manager of IBM's data management business.
She said IBM uses Cloudscape in more than 70 of its products. "If we found this useful," others would also find it useful, she said.
Derby is targeted for applications such as running a small Web site or point-of-sales systems that do not require large databases such as IBM's own DB2.
In open source software, the basic programming code can be copied and modified freely by developers, allowing wide collaboration.
This is unlike proprietary software from companies such as Microsoft Corp., which have carefully guarded codes.
Many companies and even governments are adopting open source software such as the Linux operating system in a bid to cut costs and address security concerns.
IBM has been a strong proponent of open source software. The company has hundreds of employees who write codes for open source software such as Linux and some 150 other projects.
The largest computer services company said it has invested several hundred million dollars in Linux and in 2001, it donated $40 million to an open source project called Eclipse.
Cloudscape has more than half a million lines of software code.
"This is going to provide some additional very useful tools for Java developers," said Greg Stein, chairman of the Apache Software Foundation. He said this is one of the biggest contributions the Apache Foundation has ever received.
The foundation and IBM will begin working with the open source community to establish Derby as a premier, open source database offering, IBM said in a statement.