IBM this week donated more than 30 open source projects to SourceForge.net and has begun a series of online skills-building programs at its developerWorks Web site to kick start and nurture emerging open source projects.

Big Blue has also announced that it will earmark support resources to developers who build Web applications using the PHP language. The recent contribution to open source is one of many that IBM has made within the past several months.

Some of the projects turned over to SourceForge include Jikes software, a Java compiler, and the Life Science Identifier, which can be used to build life sciences applications. SourceForge, the recipient of IBM's goodwill, plays host to over 96,000 projects with in excess of one million registered users.

IBM's planned expansion to its 4.5 million registered user strong developerWorks Web site will introduce educational resources and a new section of the site devoted entirely to PHP. The section will contain technical white papers, tutorials and forums to encourage collaborative development.

IBM estimates that PHP accounts for more than 40 percent of the overall Web programming language market.

A partnership with Zend Technologies will begin the process of integrating the open source PHP language into IBM's Cloudscape database. The software will be made available through developerWorks in the second quarter of 2005.

Some analyst view IBM's generosity as being a strategic move against Microsoft in the Web services arena. "Microsoft is turning up the heat as it prepares to unleash new .NET products, including SQL Server and Visual Studio. At the same time, JupiterResearch surveys show increasing business adoption of Microsoft Web services technologies," Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox told BetaNews.

In all, Big Blue has offered up over 120 collaborative projects to the open source community and recently pledged 500 software patents that are free to use under the Open Source Initiative's terms of license.

Last week, IBM revealed that it will spend $100 million over the next three years to broaden the use of Linux-based technologies within its Workplace family of products and to assist customers to build their own end-to-end solutions with Linux.