The open source community has been buzzing about IBM’s evolving plays in the field. The discussion continues in Scott M. Fulton’s ReadWriteWeb.com post, “IBM Open-Sources Potential ‘Internet of Things’ Protocol.” Fulton discusses IBM’s goal to produce a new Web based on asynchronous inter-device communication among billions of simultaneous devices. For example, public transit systems that allows traffic signals to communicate with each other enabling live and automated rerouting of traffic.

Fulton has this to say about IBM’s plans with open source,

Although IBM is touting its continued commitment to open standards, it’s also clear that there’s payback for IBM in the form of a headstart for middleware support. As this page reveals, amid the existing open source MQTT servers available for experimentation today are servers for message queuing telemetry are based around WebSphere, and messaging brokers are based around Lotus Expeditor.

A great many breakthrough proposals for Internet technologies never actually bore fruit. The Web we could be using now, is tremendously more capable than the one you have in front of you.

And while MQTT is far from being confirmed as the web of future stuff, IBM’s proposal is an exciting conversation starter and offers a glimpse of the world the powerhouse envisions for the future. The idea also brings to mind a benefit of open source and that is the community that embraces it. While industry giants, like IBM, play the game, the open source community is dedicated to encouraging collaboration and developing free and pertinent technology. That’s why we like organizations, like LucidWorks, that support the open source community and the benefits they provide.

Philip West, September 17, 2012

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.