Application lifecycle tool to be released as free Eclipse plug-in OpenMake Software plans next week to offer process automation software free for software development teams.The company will provide process automation components from its OpenMake build-to-release management product as a free application called OpenMake Mojo, which is based on the Eclipse Rich Client Platform. Process automation serves as a way for developers to manage individual processes from coding to deployment.OpenMake’s announcement is planned for the EclipseCon conference in Santa Clara, Calif. Mojo will be available on March 5 in an early Release Candidate form as a plug-in to the Eclipse development environment. It also can be used separately from Eclipse. The general release of Mojo is planned for April 2. With this move, the company seeks to offer an alternative to IBM BuildForge or Anthill Pro for process automation.“What we’ve done is taken a part of our OpenMake offering, specifically the process automation components, which allow you to do, basically, job scheduling,” and offer that free, said Tracy Ragan, OpenMake COO.By using the process automation software, developers can build workflows for the software development process that could include such steps as checking out software from a source code management system and executing scripts. Although Mojo is free, it will not be offered as an open-source product, Ragan said. The company decided not to open-source the code after determining that OpenMake, not the community at large, would be the main contributor to the product.Although Mojo will be free, the company looks to establish mindshare for its OpenMake product and also will sell support services at a cost of $50 per seat per year. The OpenMake product offers incremental builds of software and can discover dependencies between executables in a production environment and the source code that created the executable; developers can manage software development parameters from a centralized knowledge base, said Ragan.With Mojo, OpenMake looks to counter IBM’s BuildForge product with its free software, Ragan said. Mojo integrates with other application lifecycle tools. Adapters are available to link to products like Microsoft Visual and IBM Rational Application Developer and ClearCase. Developer teams can centralize build-to-release activities like software configuration management checkout, build script execution, and deployment scheduling. Centralized access is provided across multiple development projects. Software Development