Why is Open Source fidelity important ?

IT vendors who maintain fidelity to open source and ensure their products are 100% compatible with the open source packages they rely on, can realize some tangible benefits.

Fidelity to open source makes it easier to integrate with other products designed to be compatible with a common set of open source packages. This approach has enabled IBM to amass 100s of partners, accelerating the adoption of products like IBM's Big Insights which builds on the open source Hadoop distribution. Clients and software vendors using open source libraries and interfaces for Hadoop can rest assured that their applications will run with Big Insights.

This approach of embracing and maintaining the integrity of open source projects enables vendors to adopt open source enhancements and innovate on top for competitive differentiation. There is an opportunity for software vendors to test and certify that each component works well together in a manner suitable for enterprise production deployment. Additionally, vendors can address backward compatibility issues prevalent in some open source projects by undergoing rigorous regression testing.

As with many other open source projects, the IBM Big Insights development team has committers to the Hadoop project and its related projects. These committers contribute to open source innovation and ensures that IBM plays a role in shaping Hadoop and is aligned to its future evolution.