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When did the code base of YottaDB/GT.M on Linux become free / open source software (FOSS)?
What is the relationship between YottaDB and GT.M?
How mature is the YottaDB/GT.M code base?
GT.M was originally developed in the mid-1980s by Greystone Technology Corporation, then of Wakefield, and later Woburn, Massachusetts. In 1998, the GT.M business (including the customers, the product, the development team, and all development assets) was acquired by Sanchez Computer Associates (Sanchez) of Malvern, Pennsylvania. In 2004, Sanchez was acquired by Fidelity National Financial (FNF) of Jacksonville, and subsequently became part of Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) into which FNF spun off its banking business. In 2017, key GT.M team leaders left FIS and joined YottaDB LLC to develop YottaDB by enhancing the mature GT.M code base to serve additional applications beyond FIS’ remit. GT.M continues to be developed by FIS.
When did the code base of YottaDB/GT.M on Linux become free/open source software (FOSS)?
Sanchez first released the source code for GT.M on Linux under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 in 2001. It subsequently moved to GPL version 3, and then to the Affero GNU General Public License (AGPL) version 3, as those licenses became available. YottaDB continues to use AGPL v3, as it must, since the code bases are virtually identical.
FIS released the GT.M test system for V6.3-000 under AGPL v3 in 2016, and YottaDB is releasing its tests under the same license.
Although the distributions are independently created, released, and maintained, most of the source code is common. YottaDB releases are built on GT.M releases, and the core YottaDB team worked together, and together led, the GT.M team for over twenty years. With that expertise, we built YottaDB to have a set of enhancements and fixes that we retrofit to GT.M releases to create YottaDB releases. So, YottaDB releases not only have YottaDB’s own enhancements and fixes but also incorporate the enhancements and fixes in GT.M.
As the source code for both GT.M on Linux and YottaDB are released under the same free/open source license, we encourage FIS to benefit from our work by merging our changes into the GT.M code base.
GT.M was originally deployed in production in 1986. Since then, it has been in daily production use around the world. Continuously invested in and enhanced since then, it is now the proven code base in use at several of the very largest real-time core-banking systems around the world (processing a few hundred million bank accounts every day).