The BMC Developer Network

We’re taking a big step forward with the release of the BMC Developer Network (BMCDN). The site features everything our developers, partners, and customers asked for over the past few months. And we’re not stopping there; understand that this site is being built in cooperation with its users.

Currently we’re featuring development centers, forums, a resource center (technical documentation), and an entire section dedicated to our open source initiatives. We want to make it as easy as possible for the open source community and our developers to interact, so we added these features to our developer network rather than creating a separate site, making BMCDN the industry's first global BSM developer community and a key resource for open source projects.

I want BMCDN to be the place for our customers, partners, the open source community, technology alliances, consulting services, and support staff worldwide to get together for real-time technical collaboration and information sharing. This is your site. Please help us satisfy your needs by suggesting new features, submitting feedback, or providing us with guidance on what open source projects you would like to see coming out of BMC.

Open Source at BMC

Next we step it up with the immediate availability of several open source projects. We’ve made available for download adapter technologies that integrate various open source and commercial products—the number one request of our existing community. These adapters take certain information out of data repositories and integrate the data into a configuration management database (CMDB), and include integrations with Altiris(r), CiscoWorks(r), LANDesk(r) Asset Manager, and HP OpenView AssetCenter.

I know what you’re thinking. Adapters are great and all, but what about real projects? Where’s the good stuff? Well, we’ve added forums to support some of the solutions we’ve open sourced in the past (i.e., CMSFS, SULoginv, MidWatch), and we’ll be taking a more active role in developing these solutions on the BMCDN. In addition to releasing adapter code and updating older projects, we’re evaluating several new ideas submitted to us from the community and we’re soliciting your ideas as well, so speak up.

Now we’ve got the infrastructure, we’ve got our developers, partners, customers, and competitors accessing the site. What we need next is your participation. Tell us what open source projects you want, and we’ll be as responsive as possible in making them happen. That’s what the BMCDN is all about.

Permissive Open Source Licensing

On to the hot button: licensing. Large software companies tend to muddy the waters by adopting different licenses for similar open source projects. We want our interaction with you to be as effortless and productive as possible. We’re showing you our appreciation for your efforts by granting you all the rights you can stand. To us, that means adopting a single permissive license. There are many OSI-approved licenses, but the BSD license is the most open license available in the market today, and we will employ it for all our open source projects.

Our BSM strategy is key to aligning business and IT. There are a lot of open source point products out there that do not play well with one another, and no clear, comprehensive enterprise management strategy. By integrating open source with BSM, we’re giving you the solutions you’re looking for and the ability to map open source management tools directly to your business strategy.

We are committed to being completely open with the community. I hope that other corporations will follow our lead and start building their developer networks with their customers and not for their customers. I also hope they’ll adopt a permissive license, and consider converting their existing projects to truly open licenses that put their user’s needs first.

You are vital to our innovation. Today’s announcements are signs that we are better positioned to meet your needs and build a better mousetrap. Your needs are our priorities. Please, visit the site. Let us know what we got right, where we can improve, and what you would like to see from our open source efforts. This is just the beginning.

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