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zopen Community Q1 2026 Recap

By | May 7, 2026

Author: Haritha Ananthakrishnan – Advisory Research Software Engineer at IBM and Open Mainframe Project Ambassador

The zopen community had a strong first quarter. Here’s a look at what the community shipped, fixed, and has coming next.

 

What Is the zopen Community?

 

The zopen community is a global group of z/OS enthusiasts dedicated to making popular open source tools available on z/OS. Newly contributed to the Open Mainframe Project, the community now hosts more than 200 open source projects spanning build tools, editors, networking, security, AI, and more.

The work matters because z/OS is a platform that organizations depend on for its reliability and ability to handle large-scale workloads. The zopen community helps close the gap between traditional mainframe environments and modern development practices. Developers get access to familiar tools through the zopen package manager, a build framework for porting open source applications to z/OS, and a growing library of ready-to-use tools.

 

Q1 2026 Highlights

 

The co-chairs shared this digest of community progress from the first quarter.

New Tools

  • oqs-provider – Supports hybrid cryptographic algorithms to help prepare for post-quantum security
  • gtest – A C++ testing framework for unit testing and code reliability (thank you, @likhitha!)
  • Thrift – A cross-language RPC framework for building scalable, multi-language services
  • k6 – A load testing tool for performance testing and observability
  • sqlite-vec – Adds vector search to SQLite, useful for AI/ML and similarity search
  • botan – A cryptography library with modern, secure primitives
  • hlasm_language_server – LSP support for High Level Assembler, improving the developer experience in editor integrations

Upstream Contribution

  • libassuan is now available upstream

Enhancements

  • Retained tags in rsync and resolved readability issues across different encodings
  • Achieved 100% test coverage for yq and rsync
  • Fixed CMake platform recognition issues (thanks, Sachin!)

Tool Upgrades

The following tools were updated to their latest versions: clang, vim, gpg, which, coreutils, nano, libgcrypt, neovim, zlib, jq, awk, perl, zip, unzip

Fixes

Updates and fixes were made across bash, gettext, autoconf, sed, tmux, zoslib, and lazygit.

Coming Soon

  • A new zopen installer (beta) will be available for testing soon. You can try the dev version now by running zopen install meta –release-line dev
  • RPM package generation via zopen build is in progress, which will simplify distribution and deployment
  • OpenSSL with liboqs integration is on the way, bringing quantum-safe cryptography support into standard SSL/TLS workflows

A big thank you to every contributor and community member who made Q1 possible. We’re excited to keep the momentum going.

Want to get involved? The zopen badge program recognizes contributors at every level, from first-timers to long-time collaborators. Earn a verifiable Credly badge you can share on LinkedIn and connect with a global community of developers passionate about z/OS.

Learn more at zopen.community

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