Mainframe Dev Access: What Changed for Open Source | John Mertic, Linux Foundation | TFiR

Swapnil Bhartiya: As we all know, that mainframe literally runs the modern economy. Banking, insurance, detail, government, everything runs on mainframe, one form other behind the scenes. But most developers building for these technologies don’t actually have access to this hardware. They have never touched real mainframe hardware. They have used emulators, they have read a lot of documentation. But they can’t only take you so far because production systems, especially mainframes, they behave differently and testing on them was out of reach for most open source contributors. That gap kind of kept new mainframers from getting hands on experience. The Open Mainframe project just opened mainframe infrastructure running Linux on IBM Z, Z OS and cloud native workloads to open source communities for development, testing and education. And once again we have with us John Murtick, Director of Program Management at the Linz foundation to walk us through that. John, first of all, it’s great to have you on the show after a long time.

John Mertic: Yes, it’s been a long time. It’s good to be back on the show and great talking to you.

Swapnil Bhartiya: Same here. First of all, those who may not know, talk a bit about what is the Open Mainframe project all about and what role it plays not only within the Linux foundation, but also within the mainframe community.

John Mertic: Yeah, so the Open Mainframe project, it’s been around for 11 years and it’s really the focal point for the Open source collaboration for Mainframe. It started around Linux on Mainframe, specifically with the Linux one and several of announcements that came out of IBM back in 2015. Over time it has grown into other areas of the mainframe Z os, which is the predominant operating system, COBOL and you know, we’ve just seen a huge intake across the whole mainframe ecosystem. You know, Open Source, Open Source has always been a part of mainframe. We can date Open Source back to schare in the 1950s of people collaborating in an open source way. Before Open Source was even a thing, even free software was a thing. One of our projects, CPT Tape stretches back to that time. But really the goal here is how to collaborate, how to pull the technologies together that really help mainframe fit within the larger enterprise computing world. And that’s where we see work like Zoe and Glossa and several others there that are really key parts of that. This is just one of our directed funds here within Linux foundation, really targeting the mainframe vertical, which is nice because it intersects a whole lot of other horizontals such as opentelemetry and some other groups as well. So it’s a really, really exciting project and you know, probably, I think one of our older projects here from a longevity standpoint we don’t see a lot to get to 10 years. So it’s pretty exciting, no?

Swapnil Bhartiya: It is exciting. Thank you for sharing that. Now let’s talk about this announcement where you just made a new mainframe infrastructure, resources available to open software we talked about in past. Finally it’s happening. So talk a bit about how much time it took for it and what does it mean for developers who target mainframe as their of course, production Systems.

John Mertic: So the OpeningFrame project launched a little bit over 11 years ago so at 2015 LinuxCon in Toronto. So we’ve been having questions about how do you get access to hardware to do open source project testing since at least that point and probably going back farther from there. You know, this hardware, not only is it just very expensive, it’s very specialty and it’s also just not very accessible. Many of these systems that are even that, you know, you might see in other ecosystems where you have a company that says, hey, I’m going to donate some of my own machines time. Some of those systems are just completely air gapped from the Internet so they’re just not accessible. So this has been a common problem that we’ve had for a number of years and so we’ve had a lot of different discussions with multiple parties, we’ve had members that have really, we’ve had conversations with, we’ve had some stopgap solutions in a few different areas but never have we really been able to crack the full problem of how can we provide infrastructure that’s accessible for any open source project that can support the S390X mainframe platform, both on the Z Linux as well as the ZOS side of things. So this is really the culmination of all of that coming together over time. And it was also just kind of a bit of a new thing because there’s never really been a program like this ever before. I’m sure a lot of people have tried to do this and maybe stalled out at different points along the way, but to the point where we’re able to actually make this sort of offering is something that, you know, literally has been, you know, years and years in the making. And it’s a big thanks to, you know, Broadcom, Converged Technology, IBM, a number of our other members who’ve contributed in one way or another to either helping make the hardware available, contributing software to be able to use it, you know, resources, time. This is truly the definition of a community effort.

Swapnil Bhartiya: And what does it really mean for of course, those who target, who want to build for Mainframe, what challenges that is solved for them, what opportunity it opens for them. And of course we can also talk about how they can access it and who can access it. Sure.

John Mertic: So mainframe is a different architecture. So it’s not like x86, it’s not like ARM or others. There’s definitely different underlying things just from an architectural standpoint. In addition, the hardware has a number of different features and functionalities that are very unique to it and very custom tailored processes and things like that and adding another layer on that. While on the Linux side of things, yes, the Linuxes you would get exposed to on a mainframe is very similar, if not almost identical to what you’d get exposed to on an X86 or an arm or other box. Z OS is an entirely different animal. Like it’s really very unique in a lot of different ways of how you interact, how you work with it, how you help support it from an operating system point of view. So for developers this has been a huge challenge. It’s like, okay, we have demands from mainframe customers of hey, I’d love to run this open source package, I would love to run this open source code. We don’t even have a way to even test. So they just kind of have to do guessing or what we’ve seen in the past is folks from an IBM or Broadcom or Rocket software. Others have just sort of done the porting work in upstream, streamed it back to the community in many cases irregardless, it’s just never been a very efficient method. And you’re also sort of creating kind of a little bit of a bottleneck of hey, there’s only a couple people specialty using companies especially to make this happen. And it’s really made it difficult for the larger ecosystem to take off. In addition, our own hosted projects have suffered from that as they’ve came to us and said, hey, we’d love to have mainframe infrastructure, hey, we have a mentee that we’d like to get mainframe infrastructure for. We’ve just not had a very good path to help provide that whatsoever. So this here kind of really opens all of that up. And really what it is is we have our interested parties who are open source project maintainers. They can come apply at the Open Mainframe Project Technical Advisory Committee. They look at the applications, they sort of make sure that it hits the core requirements which is really this is an open source project, this isn’t commercial work, this is truly designed to be an open source project, you know, and it’s designed to really benefit the mainframe community as a whole. And it’s really designed to add value, you know, for growing the mainframe ecosystem. The groups looks at that and then you know, you know, does hey this looks good and then refers them on, then passes them on to the backend teams. And we have folks at IBM that are really helping do the work of getting these projects set up with instances and things like that. And, and the good thing is, is if you’re an open source project and you’re like I don’t know what to even ask for. Just there’s a standard offering that’s right out of the gate. It’s like hey, here’s what a standard Z Linux image. This is what a standard Z OS image. Here you go, ready to go. So you don’t have to know of like I need this many IPLs and this much disk space and this, that and the other thing. It’s a very standard offering that’s really approachable. Anybody. We do also have some flexibility that if projects have very specific requirements, we’re also able to accommodate those. So it might be specific underlying hardware, specific underlying systems, other things like that. There is some flexibility in that way and that’s a real benefit that we have through a lot of the partnerships that we’ve built here. So it’s very simple. Apply to the Tac. Tac looks at it says yes, no and helps move you along to the next step of the journey.

Swapnil Bhartiya: Excellent, thank you. And as you mentioned IBM. Can you also talk about the role of Broadcom and IBM? What did that involvement look like? How deeply they are involved, how they are supporting this project.

John Mertic: I think both groups are really supportive because both groups see the need for it. You know, years ago we did have Broadcom that brought some hardware to the table. We’re having that paired with a lot of the IBM expertise and some of the other labs and other environments. And we’re sort of seeing the culmination of all of that coming together under one roof here. So for a project half of things we’re almost, you could argue we’re getting a little bit of the best of both worlds here. But what I kind of look at this as is this is this is this whole ecosystem coming around and saying hey, we don’t need a single point solution here. We need a unified solution that everyone can take advantage of and there’s a central path to go through. And I think that’s where each of these companies and more have really come to the table and said, hey, this is what we’d be willing to help support. This is the way Levylen would help do all of these sorts of things. So it’s been pretty exciting.

Swapnil Bhartiya: Now. This was something that you and I talked for a long time. Finally it is happening, it has happened. What is next for the project as you look to expand access to more open source initiatives?

John Mertic: You know, I think the project’s looking down the road here and just continuing to answer the question of, or ask the question rather of what are the technologies, what are the things in place that are really needed to have Mainframe continue to be that first class citizen within an enterprise computing realm? And there’s certainly a lot of other crossover technology things out there. You know, we’re seeing observability being a key thing that’s being driven. And so we’re seeing a lot of work that’s happening that way. There certainly is work on how can we have a cohesive and aligned strategy on helping port more open source and having a sustained way of maintaining open source that works on the platform. You know, some more broad open source along with ways to do distribute distribution of these packages out to mainframe operating systems. But then I mean, I think just like everybody else you talk to, there’s this thing called AI out there that everyone’s. Lots of excitement and lots of enthusiasm and I think we’re starting to see in this realm here of what are the possibilities and what are the collaboration areas, what is the ways that there’s already tooling and various other open source areas, you know, such as what we’re seeing in agentic AI and PyTorch and others that really of how could those sort of be applied here and partnered with here. And I think that’s, you see that if you, if you talk with any, any of our EDs or anybody within a lot of our vertical or vertical oriented for our foundations, you know, motion picture, energy, whatever, you know, our horizontal ones are very big intersection points of like, hey, how do these technologies fit within this ecosystem? How do they fit with this in the environment? How do they fit here? And so I think that’s the area that we’re seeing the next level of exploration beginning to happen of what does that look like? Where are the opportunities there? And you know, we’re already hearing, we’re already seeing this percolate all over the place. So this I think will be a huge enablement thing because this helps solidify this as a home for driving this collaboration. But I think as the Bigger picture here it begins to open the next level of questions of what are the next technologies that this community can look to collaborate on.

Swapnil Bhartiya: Can you talk about what has been the initial feedback from the community who suddenly got access to this infrastructure?

John Mertic: I think everybody I’ve heard has been super excited. And even after we did some of the initial announcements back last month, we’ve had a number of projects begin to reach out and say, hey, we’ve been looking for something like this, how can we get on it? And so our attck has been busy of looking at these applications here over the past month or so. So it’s been really, really exciting to see because this is again, this has been a problem out there. Nobody’s ever really known who to ask uniformly. Again, if you happened to know someone, if you happened to have knock on the right doors, hey, maybe there’s a path to getting some mainframe access here. But to have something here that has a very openly governed, straightforward way and a very clean way for open source project data, there’s just nothing like it. And so we’ve had just nothing but positive reception about that.

Swapnil Bhartiya: For those open source projects watching this, who want to get access to it, what should they do? How can they apply to get access to this infrastructure?

John Mertic: Yeah, and we’ll get you the link so you can have it in the notes and everything. But there’s a link on the tac you can apply, you provide some information about what your project, what you’re looking to do and that, and then from there that goes to our technical advisory committee, they review all of these and then they approve, not approve, and kind of go from there. So it’s a very straightforward piece there. And I would say really any projects that are in an area where they’re in an active area to be supporting mainframe, so not just, hey, I want this infrastructure for maybe in two years when I decide to get around to it. But they’re like, now we’re ready to do it. Those are the ones that I think are getting prioritized predominantly by the tac.

Swapnil Bhartiya: John, thank you so much for first of all, making this resource available to the larger community. Now they can actually play with it. And thank you for walking us through and I look forward to chat with you again as well. Thank you.

John Mertic: Yes, and big thank you really, to the Open Mainframe project and all of its members who have pulled together and invested. They do the hard work out there. We’re just kind of the conduit to help them make this come together. So it’s a big thanks to all of them for making this happen.