Video by The Linux Foundation via YouTube
John Mertic, Director of Program Management at the Linux Foundation, explains how the Open Mainframe Project has finally solved the 11-year-old problem of making s390x mainframe infrastructure accessible to any open source project, covering both z/Linux and z/OS environments.
Full article and transcript: https://tfir.io/mainframe-ci-access-open-source-linux-foundation/
For over a decade, open source maintainers targeting mainframe have had no reliable way to test their code. Mainframe hardware is expensive, specialty, and often air-gapped, meaning developers were left guessing or relying on a handful of specialists at IBM, Broadcom, or Rocket Software to do porting work on their behalf.
The Open Mainframe Project, launched in 2015, has now opened a formal infrastructure program built on contributions from Broadcom, Converged Technologies, IBM, and other members. In this clip from TFiR, John Mertic walks through how the program works, who can apply, and what a standard offering looks like for maintainers who have never touched a mainframe before.
Key Topics Covered:
– Why mainframe hardware has been inaccessible to open source projects for over a decade
– The difference between z/Linux and z/OS and why z/OS creates a unique development challenge
– How the Open Mainframe Project Technical Advisory Committee evaluates and approves access requests
– What a standard z/Linux and z/OS image offering includes out of the box
– How projects with specific hardware requirements can request flexible configurations
#OpenMainframe #LinuxFoundation #s390x #MainframeDevelopment #OpenSource