IBM Exec Sees Open-source Boom in 2006

By Eric Lai

January 30, 2006 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of standards and open-source, expects a number of industries to embrace open-source software in 2006 -- and he expects IBM to play a role in many of those efforts. In an interview with Computerworld last week, Sutor also weighed in on the state of Linux and on Massachusetts' plans to use the XML-based OpenDocument file format.


Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of standards and open-source

What industries do you expect will embrace open-source this year? There will be a continuation in health care and education. I think financial services will have a big year. They're always looking for efficiencies and greater economies of scale. Retail is another area, as we see a lot of standardization work going on there.
We're also starting to see more open-source projects that are specific to a particular industry. The Sakai project in education is a good example. It is basically an ERP system for universities. Instead of managing customers, it manages students and courses and allows information-sharing between colleges and universities.

Why hasn't Linux, with its strengths as a thin-client system, had better success in the retail point-of-sale business? I think as retailers get more creative and start building these "stores of the future," they are going to look for Linux. The price is right, the ability to code on them is right. I wouldn't ask, "How do we get more Linux in retail?" It's, "How do we get it thoroughly open-source and standards-based so there's a level playing field?" That way you can see where open-source makes sense and where proprietary products make sense.
On the Linux server side, we've done some interesting things in stores. There's an RFID project with German retailer Metro AG and SAP AG. Linux servers monitor what's happening on the shelves, like when items are taken off and brought to the register.

What's your prognosis for Linux on the client, especially now that virtualization technologies look to give it a boost? Open Source Development Labs late last year had a meeting to really start to figure out how to converge some of the technologies on the client. Progress is being made, and OSDL has really taken a leadership position on this.

Do you still hold out hope that we'll someday see an open-source Java? I think the way things are going on Apache, we're getting there little by little. We said what we said two years ago because we wanted to get the issues out there and have Sun respond. In different ways, they have

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