Cisco leans towards open source

Cisco Systems has announced a new messaging protocol called Etch, designed to allow developers to integrate client/server applications without the overhead common to traditional protocols such as SOAP. It also was created to be language, platform and transport agnostic. Initial release will support both C# and Java, with implementations for Ruby, Python and C expected to be available in the near future. Integration into Microsoft's Visual Studio or the Eclipse project will be included.

The hidden gem in the announcement is that Etch will be open-sourced, though Cisco is still trying to decide which license to use.  Coming from Cisco, this could well herald a new wave of open source projects spearheaded by traditional proprietary-systems vendors.

For more on Cisco's new messaging protocol:
- check out this CIO.com article