Happy 10th Anniversary, Open Mainframe Project
A Decade of Developers, Community, and Mainframe
Home » Happy 10th Anniversary, Open Mainframe Project!
“Ten years ago, we set out to prove that the mainframe wasn’t just relevant, it was essential to the future of enterprise computing. What’s happened since has been beyond what any of us imagined - an open source movement that’s trained new talent, built groundbreaking tools, and redefined what’s possible on the platform. This community didn’t just keep the mainframe alive, it made it thrive.”
Len SantaluciaChair of the Open Mainframe Project Governing Board
2015
Open Mainframe Project launches
With founding members IBM, Vicom Infinity, ADP, SUSE, and CA Technologies.
2016
Mentorship Program begins
Program gives students hands-on experience with Linux, open source, and mainframes. SHARE joins later that year.
2016
SHARE joins OMP
SHARE Association becomes a member of the project, marking the first collaboration of the two groups.
2018
Zowe launches
Launch of Zowe, the first open source project based on z/OS.
2019
Zowe gains traction
Earns CII Best Practice Badge, first Zowe Foundations course launches, Feilong debuts, Zowe turns one, and Women in IT initiative kicks off.
2019
Feilong released
Feilong, a z/VM Cloud Connector that provides virtual resource management for z/VM, was launched.
2020
Tessia released
Open Mainframe Project launches Tessia, an open source project for Z resource management and automated installation of Linux distribution, manages relationships between Z datacenter resources and allocates them to specific projects and users according to a role-based schema.
2020
First Open Mainframe Summit
Open Mainframe Project announces 5 new projects at Open Mainframe Summit: CBT Tape, Mainframe Open Education, Software Discovery Tool, GenevaERS and COBOL Working Group.
2020
First hackathon
Open Mainframe launched its first-ever virtual hackathon for Zowe that was open to the community and lasted from February 23- April 30 with teams presenting their solutions and projects on zoom.
2020
Ambitus released
Open Mainframe launches Ambitus, a community around all open source technologies on z/OS by educating developers, sharing experiences about how to use technology stacks to accomplish useful business tasks and exchanging best practices, sample code, architectures and more.
2020
OMP becomes an umbrella project
Open Mainframe Project has become an umbrella project that is home to 16 different open source projects including a COBOL Working Group and a Zowe Conformance Program.
2021
Zowe projects added
New Zowe incubator projects launch (Workflow WiZard, ZEBRA), and Zowe Conformant Support Provider Program launches.
2021
COBOL growth
COBOL Check launches and COBOL Course graduate to active project.
2021
Diversity and Inclusion Recognition
With a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, Open Mainframe Summit earned a Gold Badge for prioritizing diversity and inclusion from the CHAOSS Diversity & Inclusion Badging Program.
2021
Ambassador Program
Ambassador Program kicks off with 10 participants from Broadcom, IBM and Western Southern.
2022
Zowe progress
Zowe wins Best DevOps for Mainframe Award and Zowe LTS V2 released.
2022
Expanding community
New Ambassadors are announced, as well as the summer mentorship program.
2023
Zowe turns five
Adoption hits nearly 70%, and SHARE features Zowe Day.
2023
Galasa joins OMP
Galasa joins the project to arm developers with a variety of development, test and continuous delivery environments to deliver secure and innovative solutions to their customers.
2024
Mentorship program grows
Mentorship program receives 1,600+ applicants, selecting 14 top-tier developer and student mentees.
2024
Zorse and zopen join OMP
Zorse and zopen join the project to provide resources to train and evaluate LLMs, and expand the development of open source tools for z/OS, respectively.
2018
Zowe is announced
First open source project based on z/OS, opening up mainframe access for a new wave of developers.
2024
Zowe adoption
Zowe adoption hits 85%, and LTS V3 launches.
2025
Mainframe Connect created
Mainframe Connect platform is created to bring regular content regarding the mainframe, the people within the mainframe ecosystem, and open source on the mainframe all in one place.
2025
OMP turns 10!
With almost 40 member organizations and more contributors, projects, and community members joining every year, the momentum is stronger than ever.
