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   3 <title>Sharing Software, IBM to Release Mail Program Blueprint</title>
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   5 <meta name="slug"   content="BC-IBM-EMAIL-NYT">
   6 <meta name="date" content="19981213">
   7 <meta name="length" content="0651">
   8 <meta name="byline" content="By JOHN MARKOFF">
   9 <meta name="headline" content="IBM to Release Original Instructions of E-Mail Program">
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  50 <BLOCKQUOTE><BLOCKQUOTE>
  51 <NYT_DATE version="1.0" type=" ">
  52 <!--ELEMENT DATE-->
  53 <H5>December 14, 1998</H5><br>
  54
  55 </NYT_DATE>
  56 <NYT_HEADLINE version="1.0" type=" ">
  57 <!--ELEMENT HEADLINE-->
  58 <H2>Sharing Software, IBM to Release Mail Program Blueprint</H2>
  59
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  61 <NYT_BYLINE version="1.0" type=" ">
  62 <!--ELEMENT BYLINE-->
  63 <h5>By JOHN MARKOFF</h5>
  64
  65 </NYT_BYLINE>
  66 <p>   <img src="http://graphics.nytimes.com/images/a.gif" align=left alt=A>dding momentum to the open-source movement for the free sharing
  67 of software, <a href=#1>IBM</a> plans Monday to make available the original
  68 programmer's instructions for a new mail program that can be used
  69 to store and forward e-mail messages with a high level of security.
  70 <p>   The program, Secure Mailer, serves as an electronic post office
  71 for server computers connected to the Internet. It was developed by
  72 Wietse Venema, an IBM researcher and computer security specialist.
  73 Executives said they were using the free, open-source model of
  74 software distribution to insure that the program would be widely
  75 available on the dozens of kinds of computers that are used to
  76 route Internet mail traffic.
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  83 <b>Related Articles</b><br>
  84 <A href="/library/tech/98/12/cyber/articles/07netscape.html">Netscape to Release New Browser Engine to Developers</a><br>(Dec. 7, 1998)
  85 <p>
  86 <a href="/library/tech/98/04/biztech/articles/13freeware.html">Sentiment Growing for Freeware</a><br>(April 13, 1998)
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  91    The open source model of software development, pioneered by a
  92 loosely affiliated group of expert programmers, is built on
  93 universal sharing of the programmer's original written instructions
  94 to the computer. In traditional, proprietary development models,
  95 those instructions are hidden because they have been compiled into
  96 the binary 1s and 0s that computers understand.
  97 <p>   The open-source model has been gaining popularity in the last
  98 year based on the success of the free Linux operating system, and
  99 in recent months several major technology corporations have
 100 endorsed part or all of the idea.
 101 <p>   "This is IBM's Christmas present to the Internet," said Abner
 102 Germanow, a computer security analyst at the International Data
 103 Corp., a market research firm. "For these are core pieces of
 104 software, and we're going beyond trying to make money off of them,
 105 to the idea that by freely sharing them it will make the world a
 106 better place."
 107 <p>   Like many big companies, the International Business Machines
 108 Corp. seems to be cautiously feeling its way toward an open-source
 109 strategy. Secure Mailer follows by just a week the company's
 110 release of the source code for a compiler, the tool used by
 111 software developers to transform instructions written in a
 112 programming language into the computer's binary machine code.
 113 <p>   In addition, IBM is making its software compatible with Apache,
 114 a popular open-source Web server program, and earlier this year it
 115 announced plans to make a version of its DB2 relational data base
 116 program available for the open-source Linux operating system.
 117 <p>   "We're still trying to understand exactly what open source
 118 means," said Paul Horn, vice president for research. "It
 119 obviously plays an important role where standards are critical, but
 120 what it means to IBM is still under formulation."
 121 <p>   Secure Mailer offers an alternative to several other freely
 122 available programs that route Internet mail, including Sendmail and
 123 Q Mail, as well as to commercial programs like Microsoft's
 124 Exchange.
 125 <p>   Currently about 70 percent of all e-mail worldwide is handled by
 126 <a href=#1>Sendmail</a>, a program that has been developed over more than a decade
 127 and supported by a programmer named Eric Allman and a loose group
 128 of colleagues. Recently, Allman started a company to develop a
 129 commercial version of the program.
 130 <p>   IBM researchers said one of the drawbacks to Sendmail was that
 131 it had been written as a large, monolithic piece of software. As a
 132 result it has both performance and security limitations.
 133 <p>   In contrast, Venema has developed Secure Mailer as a cluster of
 134 modules, all of which distrust each other. This creates a more
 135 secure program. The program could be compared to a ship that has
 136 many independent compartments and therefore is harder to sink, he
 137 said.
 138 <p>   Charles Palmer, who manages a computer security research group
 139 at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Laboratory, said that enabling other
 140 programmers to look at all the original instructions written by the
 141 program's author would give them a high degree of confidence in the
 142 security of a program.
 143 <p>   <p><NYT_LINKS_OFFSITE version="1.0" type="main"><a name=1></a><hr size=1><b>Related Sites</b><br>
 144  <font size=-1>These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability.</font><p><ul></NYT_LINKS_OFFSITE>
 145
 146 <p><li><a href="http://www.ibm.com">IBM</a>
 147 <p><li><a href="http://www.sendmail.com">Sendmail</a>
 148
 149 </ul>
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