International Business Machines is putting its money where its mouth is on the open source movement by donating $40 million worth of Java-based software to the open source community.

Code named Eclipse, the software is to be used in the movement to build a variety of integrated Internet-based applications on a Linux-based operating system as well as Microsoft's dominant Windows operating system.

The code supports J2EE, Web services, XML, HTML, rich media, site design, voice, wireless and embedded devices and largely consists of IBM's WebSphere Studio application development platform.

The announcement is part of IBM's ongoing strategic embrace of Linux and other platforms that are part of the open source movement. With the Eclipse-based tools workable on both Linux and Windows, developers won't have to create e-business applications separately in a Windows environment and then move them over to a Linux system. Instead, they can "plug" them in with Eclipse.

IBM has made big strides in the hardware market with its open-source Apache servers; with today's donation it is making a similar pitch with software for e-business and Web services.

The new Eclipse open source community involves over 150 software tool developers and contributions from over 1,200 individual developers around the globe.

The organization is expected to be managed by a multi-vendor organization including IBM, Merant, QSSL, Rational, Red Hat, TogetherSoft, and others. Still to come is an announcement on who will make up the organization's board of directors.