A vibrant global open source community that works together to expand the availability and development of open source tools for z/OS, making it a first-class modern platform.
Project Overview
z/OS is a robust, reliable platform. It remains a critical part of the enterprise IT landscape due to its unmatched reliability, security, and ability to handle large-scale, complex workloads. Its ability to combine legacy application support with modern technologies ensures it continues to be a relevant and powerful operating system for organizations that require both stability and flexibility.
Newly contributed to the Open Mainframe Project, the zopen community is a global community dedicated to making a modern collection of popular open source tools for z/OS, making the platform more accessible to modern developers and organizations embracing open source technology. With more than 200+ projects and a thriving community, it is shaping the future of z/OS open source development.
The zopen community accelerates modernization efforts on the mainframe, making it easier for companies to adapt z/OS to the latest development standards, especially with the growing adoption of DevOps and CI/CD pipelines. This community also helps reduce the learning curve and complexity of z/OS environments by providing ready-to-use, familiar Open Source tools, improving developer productivity and enabling faster deployments. Other benefits include:
- Access to a wide array of open-source tools on z/OS (build, compression, networking, editors, AI, coreutils, security and more), filling a critical need for modern development environments.
- Simplified tool consumption via the zopen package manager, which makes managing tools on z/OS user-friendly and efficient.
- A build framework to streamline and simplify porting open source applications to z/OS.
The zopen community complements existing Open Mainframe Project initiatives by providing a set of open source tools for z/OS. This bridges the gap between traditional mainframe environments and modern development practices (Linux). zopen community tools facilitate seamless integration with other projects, such as Zowe, by offering tools that enable automation, interoperability, and improved workflows across different platforms.
