IBM open-sources its SystemML machine learning tech

IBM has fulfilled its promise to open-source SystemML, a machine learning system that's now been accepted as an Apache Incubator project. It's a significant milestone for SystemML, which is already used to power IBM's BigInsights data analytics platform. The Apache Incubator program is a kind of stepping stone on the way to becoming a full project under The Apache Software Foundation, where developers ensure code donations adhere to the ASF's guidelines and that the community follows its principles. The SystemML technology emerged from IBM's development of Watson, and integrates closely with another Apache project, Spark. SystemML helps Watson to keep up to date by providing a language that directly exposes the capabilities of the artificial intelligence so data scientists can harvest it.