| IBM was quick to recognize the value of open source, forming alliances with distributors, contributing to the open source community, and enabling IBM products and services for many opens source products. IBM believes this investment will benefit service providers as they continue to look for effective alternatives like Linux for their IT infrastructures and e-business applications. In 2001, IBM announced a donation of $40 million worth of software tools to the public domain in a move to create an open source organization aimed at developers. An organization called Eclipse will make available some of IBM's software programming tools to developers to create applications for e-businesses and Web services. More than 150 of the leading open source companies, such as Linux distributors Red Hat and SuSE, along with Merant, QSSL, and Rational, are a part of the Eclipse community. IBM has made a strong push into the open source sector in recent years. Open source and free software represent a challenge to Microsoft and its ubiquitous Windows operating system software, which can cost businesses thousands of dollars a month to license. Open source applications are generally considered lower-cost alternatives. This demonstrates IBM's commitment to open source software. It also shows that IBM understands that to reach business developers to create open source applications, it has to let them adopt software tools for open source to be successful in major enterprises. Also, convincing developers inside of large organizations or developers that create software for large organizations to use open source tools is critical. Shortly after Eclipse, IBM said it would invest $1 billion in Linux across all product lines: PCs, portables, servers, and mainframes. For IBM, Linux represents a single operating system that can span a range of disparate hardware, from wristwatches to the company's multimillion-dollar supercomputers. IBM also sees Linux and open source giving it a competitive edge for developer talent over Sun Microsystems and its proprietary Solaris operating system. By seeding the market with tools for building open source software, IBM gains a large base of developers building applications that can run on its servers. The company could also benefit by offering to its customers programs built under the open source development model, in which thousands of programmers can collaborate on writing and debugging software. The Eclipse announcement marks another step in the company's open source strategy. Eclipse-based tools run on both Linux and Windows, which allows developers to create a single application, rather than going through the hassle of creating software in Windows and transferring it to Linux, according to IBM. Eclipse is an open universal platform for tools integration based on J2EE. The platform enables developers to work with tools from different vendors in an integrated, portal-like environment, making it easier for technology producers and consumers to create, integrate, and use software tools. The hope for Eclipse is that with tools that work directly on both operating systems, Linux developers can more easily turn to the more abundant software tools available for Windows, helping to increase the number of available Linux applications. IBM said that more than 5,000 individual developers from 63 countries are participating in the Eclipse open source community. | 
