IBM Sweetens Cloudscape Pot with Developer Challenge (
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A loaded ThinkPad T42 will be the first prize in Big Blue's contest, which aims to coax developers into writing solid software for its open-sourced Cloudscape database.Big Blue is taking a page from Computer Associates International Inc. when it comes to building community around Cloudscape, the Java database it recently donated to the Apache Software Foundation. Both companies are offering prizes for the best software written for their open-source databases, although IBM's wee prizes—to be announced at ApacheCon 2004 US next week in Las Vegas—do pale in comparison with
CA's $1 million challenge.
According to the ApacheCon site, IBM is donating goodies including a first prize of a ThinkPad T42 with 1GB memory, a 40GB disk, a CD-RW/DVD-ROM and integrated wireless networking.
Another prize will be a free round-trip airline ticket, from anywhere in the world, with a full registration packet to ApacheCon 2005 EU and complementary registration to ApacheCon 2005 US.
The contest involves developing code using the Apache Derby Project—IBM's name for the open-source package of which the Cloudscape database is one central piece. A free, half-day tutorial devoted to Derby will take place Sunday at ApacheCon.
In addition, IBM is waving some cash around in order to get the open-source community excited about Cloudscape. A broadened version of its Innovation Grant program for 2005 will include run-time environments that can be targeted by Eclipse-based tools.
The company is particularly encouraging proposals that focus on Derby as well as Eclipse; autonomic computing; scalability and availability technologies; Unstructured Information Management Architecture; and scripting environments such as PHP, Perl and Python.
IBM will accept submissions of applications through Dec. 2. The best applications will net developers awards in the $10,000 to $30,000 range.
A ThinkPad or even $10,000 might seem like small potatoes when compared with the $1 million in prize money that CA is handing out. CA is rewarding developers who concoct tools that will easily migrate users off of all of the major relational databases and onto CA's recently open-sourced relational database, Ingres R3.
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