It was August 3 that IBM announced its contribution of "Derby," a copy of its Cloudscape relational database to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), in an effort to spur more innovation around the Java development community. The source code for Derby is now available on the Apache Incubator project Web site.

The decision to Open Source Cloudscape has generated significant interest around the technology, says IBM. In just three weeks, there have been over 5000 downloads of the Cloudscape binary code.

"IBM has a strong commitment to the Java community as well as to continued Java innovation," says Gina Poole, Vice President, Developer Marketing & Web Communities for ISV and Developer Relations. "By providing resources on Cloudscape, IBM developerWorks is helping software developers help our customers and ISVs be more innovative in developing business applications that are based on open standards."

The ASF and IBM, Poole explains, have begun working with the community to establish Derby as a leading, open source database offering. Developers generally interested in Derby can visit the Apache site, she says, while developers who want to use the code for development purposes can continue to visit developerWorks and download Cloudscape.

In addition, developer resources on Cloudscape and additional code will be offered.

Today, says Poole, IBM participates in and contributes to more than 150 open source projects - including Linux, Eclipse, the Globus Alliance and an already established relationship with Apache.

"To date, IBM has invested well over $1 billion on open source efforts and the company continues to invest several hundred million dollars annually," she notes.