Il Rational Unified Process (RUP) è il processo offerto
(a pagamento, come prodotto singolo o all'interno della Suite) da IBM Rational.
Ora una parte di questo processo è stata donata alla comunità opensource.
Proprio qualche giorno fa discutevo con alcune persone del fatto che MSF è
sempre stato reso disponibile gratuitamente, in forma aperta e completamente
customizzabile fin dai primi anni 90.
Ora esistono VSTS e TFS che forniscono un tool per supportare MSF 4 (in
entrambe le versioni) e anche altri processi (implementabili tramite l'SDK o
prodotti dedicati, come quelli di Osellus), ma MSF è disponibile (per ora in
beta) anche come download gratuito.
Probabilmente questa mossa di IBM riequilibra in parte la situazione,
soprattutto a basso livello.
Certo che il nome è tutto un programma 
!
Ho segnato in bold le frasi più significative del post di
David Anderson, PM di MSF CMMI.
So our friends over at IBM have handed over parts of the Rational Unified Process to the open source community. We've heard that internally they refer to this version as BUP (Basic Unified Process). Hmmm.
Before everyone gets all warm and gooey over this act of selflessness, I'd like us to consider what's happened here. Didn't Rational already drive an open standard for process at the OMG call the Unified Development Process? And isn't RUP simply an attempt to commercialize that with an offering which embraces and extends the open standard? So why if RUP is open standards based suddenly turn a piece of it over to the open source community? Isn't it open already? What gives? Methinks there might be another reason for this fit of altruism.
Is anyone in any doubt that this move from IBM
is prompted in response to some serious competition coming to market with a
commodity priced offering which is nonetheless innovative in a way that RUP
hasn't been for quite some years?
Personally, I think this is great for customers.
It is capitalism in action. A bit of competition stimulates
innovation and brings prices down. It grows the market, by reducing the
barriers to entry. I look forward to this continued demonstration of
capitalism as we on the MSF team push yet more innovations into future
versions of our process templates and raise the bar for our
competitors including our new open source challenger - BUP - Pardon, I ate too much process guidance for lunch.
Fonte: BUP! Pardon my Open Source Process