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One of the reasons that some consider Java uncool, is because of the myth that Java is slow. I call it a myth, and I will try to explain why it is a myth. (Actually, in theory, Java will outperform C++ soon).

Just to take a swing at another myth, while we're at it: When it comes to size of the stack, how you want the garbage collector to use memory etc., you CAN in fact give the JVM parameters to control this stuff.

Java isn't slow anymore. It may be true, that (small) Java applications generally takes a little longer to start up, if you didn't use an AOT compiler (like for instance the "free as in freedom" compiler GCJ or the more mature but proprietary Excelsior JET). Its true that early versions of Java were slow, but 1.4.x isn't generally slower than C++, in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it outperformed C++ on general terms one of these days.

One of the things that makes Java "not slow", is actually the way memory is allocated. Its rather cheap to allocate memory in Java, compared to other languages, and its even cheaper to "free" memory, since you don't do it, you have the cost of the garbage collector instead. The garbage collector in Java is very fast, compared to older garbage collectors.

(For the interested, IBM has an article on "garbage collection in the HotSpot JVM", and another article that explains various garbage collection techniques, and finally they have an article that covers performance concerning garbage collection. They have a lot of other interesting articles, but I don't want to list all I know, if you like to check it out, here is the search I used to "refind" these articles.)

I make the claim that Java isn't slow, but don't just take my worth for it. (Not that I think you would). Go search on google or whatever. A word of warning though .. since older Java's were indeed slow, do note the version of the Java tested. It should be (at least) 1.4.x. I don't think 1.5.x is stable yet and I dunno if its faster or slower, but 1.4.x have a real nice enhanced garbage collecting subsystem. (Esp. 1.4.2 and above).

(On purpose, I didn't go for SUN benchmarks, as they might be (considered) biased, but sun does have a word to say about "Java Performance".)

Here is a couple of quotes from an article that considers performance of Java vs. C++, analysing some benchmarks of Java, C++ and other languages. While the article was updated this year, I was still unable to find a link to a benchmark diagram of the current 1.4.x JVM. It seems though, that the 1.3.x wasn't too slow, even without latest optimised GC-subsystem, which is one of the key factors that makes 1.4.2 faster.

Here are the quotes:

"Five composite benchmarks listed below show that modern Java has acceptable performance, being nearly equal to (and in many cases faster than) C/C++ across a number of benchmarks."

"Java is now nearly equal to (or faster than) C++ on low-level and numeric benchmarks. This should not be surprising: Java is a compiled language (albeit JIT compiled)."

One of the reasons that some consider Java uncool, is because of the myth that Java is slow. I call it a myth, and I will try to explain why it is a myth. (Actually, in theory, Java will outperform C++ soon).

Just to take a swing at another myth, while we're at it: When it comes to size of the stack, how you want the garbage collector to use memory etc., you CAN in fact give the JVM parameters to control this stuff.

Java isn't slow anymore. It may be true, that (small) Java applications generally takes a little longer to start up, if you didn't use an AOT compiler (like for instance the "free as in freedom" compiler GCJ or the more mature but proprietary Excelsior JET). Its true that early versions of Java were slow, but 1.4.x isn't generally slower than C++, in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it outperformed C++ on general terms one of these days.

One of the things that makes Java "not slow", is actually the way memory is allocated. Its rather cheap to allocate memory in Java, compared to other languages, and its even cheaper to "free" memory, since you don't do it, you have the cost of the garbage collector instead. The garbage collector in Java is very fast, compared to older garbage collectors.

(For the interested, IBM has an article on "garbage collection in the HotSpot JVM", and another article that explains various garbage collection techniques, and finally they have an article that covers performance concerning garbage collection. They have a lot of other interesting articles, but I don't want to list all I know, if you like to check it out, here is the search I used to "refind" these articles.)

I make the claim that Java isn't slow, but don't just take my worth for it. (Not that I think you would). Go search on google or whatever. A word of warning though .. since older Java's were indeed slow, do note the version of the Java tested. It should be (at least) 1.4.x. I don't think 1.5.x is stable yet and I dunno if its faster or slower, but 1.4.x have a real nice enhanced garbage collecting subsystem. (Esp. 1.4.2 and above).

(On purpose, I didn't go for SUN benchmarks, as they might be (considered) biased, but sun does have a word to say about "Java Performance".)

Here is a couple of quotes from an article that considers performance of Java vs. C++, analysing some benchmarks of Java, C++ and other languages. While the article was updated this year, I was still unable to find a link to a benchmark diagram of the current 1.4.x JVM. It seems though, that the 1.3.x wasn't too slow, even without latest optimised GC-subsystem, which is one of the key factors that makes 1.4.2 faster.

Here are the quotes:

"Five composite benchmarks listed below show that modern Java has acceptable performance, being nearly equal to (and in many cases faster than) C/C++ across a number of benchmarks."

"Java is now nearly equal to (or faster than) C++ on low-level and numeric benchmarks. This should not be surprising: Java is a compiled language (albeit JIT compiled)."

Yes, and what's worse is some manufacturers have actually shipped products containing viruses more than once!

In 1992, IBM accidentally shipped 500 PCs carrying the Michelangelo virus.

And in 1998, they spread the CIH Virus:

On September 1998, Yamaha shipped a firmware update to their CD-R400 Drives that was infected with the virus. On October 1998, a demo version of the Activision game SiN that was propagated by users got infected due to contact with an infected file on a certain user's machine. That company's infection came from a group of Aptiva PC's shipped by IBM during March 1999 with the CIH virus pre-installed.

The point I gave up on Mandrake was when I tried to copy an 8 meg file from one folder to another on a stock Mandrake installation on a Pentium IV 3.4MHz with 2G of RAM and a 120G HD. I was sitting there for more than 20 minutes, doing something that would have taken a few seconds on my Pentium Pro running NT 3.51. 20 minutes. And during this time, Mozilla was frozen, and VIM was virtually unusable.

Can anyone tell me why people still use Mandrake when there are superior offerings out there?

Does this version work any better?

[N]one of the source forge crowd's top 3 languages are open source

They started by creating the CPL, getting it certified, and have now been hiring prominent open source developers to work on CPL.

The CPL was not created by Microsoft - as mentioned here, it was created by IBM, and is essentially an updated and generalized version of IBM's original Open Source license, the IBM Public License.

When someone incorporates CPL code, there's no way to prove that they modified it themselves, and so CPL compliance is based entirely on the goodwill of corporations, and we've seen how generous that goodwill is...

Irrelevant - there's no way to prove that someone has incorporated GPL code into a closed source product, short of obvious indicators like embedded strings, etc. GPL compliance is also "based entirely on the goodwill of corporations". The long and the short of the matter is that a company that's willing to knowingly violate the CPL will probably also be willing to knowingly violate the GPL.

The CPL is designed so that companies can take advantage of the work of open source developers without having to compensate them in any way... traditionally, with Open Source, the developers receive the source for their project, and any derivative works.

As is the GPL. Neither the CPL nor the GPL are concerned with the origin of software, they're concerned with the distribution of software. They're both designed to ensure that the recipient of a piece of software has access to the source code. That's it. Nothing in either license about compensating the original developers, or having to give back source code to the original developers. Even you recognize this - while it's "traditional" to contribute back changes to an GPL'd project, it's not required. In fact, the FSF considers this kind of requirement onerous enough that they explicitly classify licenses that have this requirement (for example, the Open Public License) as non-free.

Now, the reason why I bring this all up is that, as mentioned above, Microsoft has been hiring prominent open source developers, having them release their source under the CPL.

...which is bad, why? We're talking about Microsoft's own code, here - it's their choice as to what license they want to release their code under. The CPL is recognized by the OSI. It's acknowledged as a free software license by the FSF, albeit one incompatible with the current GPL because it addresses patent issues that the GPL does not.

In fact, at this point, if there's anyone that's getting a "free ride" off of Microsoft's actions, it's everyone except Microsoft, who now has access to - and can use - Microsoft's CPL software, as is, without any obligation.

Overall, I think this is a positive event. It appears there are OSS advocates (not juse Josh!) within Microsoft who seem to be trying to convince the corporate culture there that OSS is not neccesarily a threat to Microsoft, and they're going about it in a very reasonable way. They selected an existing OSS license instead of coming up with Yet Another License. They released code for a couple of trial projects under this license, and have been following the OSS philosophy of "release early, release often". They've apparently met with enough success with these projects that they feel they have a good reason to actively encourage the release other projects under OSS licenses, and they're asking the community for input on what else to consider releasing

Nielsen says: As long as [Open Source programmers] are designing for other people like themselves it works quite well. But as soon as they try and design for the average person it breaks down...

By taking a user centered design approach, ALL users are accounted for in the design so that the end product can be usable and controllable.

On reliability:
"After 3 or 4 power cycles, ReiserFS became corrupted to the point that the system would not boot up (the fsck failed and the bootup stopped there)." - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-Ju ly/msg00418.html

On code maturity:
"In contrast, ReiserFS' fsck is in its infancy..." - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/librar y/l-fs7/

Hans and co's attitude:
"For $25 you get an answer to any question we can answer with less than half an hour of working on it. fsck support sometimes takes more than half an hour" - http://www.namesys.com/support.html

Can anyone tell me why people still use Mandrake when there are superior offerings out there?

http://www-3.ibm.com/ibm/easy/eou_ext.nsf/Publish/ 6

Has anyone ever seen an atom?

Not a single atom directly (large collections, sure...) - They're too small... but... with the aid of a tunnelling microscope, these days people regularly probe individual atoms. And even sculpt corporate logos out of small groups of them...

http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/atomo.html

Can you tell me what license this patch is distributed under? Or this one, or most of the other ones for that matter?

And yes it does make Best Buy a Linux distributor.

Can you tell me what license this patch is distributed under? Or this one, or most of the other ones for that matter?

And yes it does make Best Buy a Linux distributor.

No such thing as a free lunch, baby.

Notesbuddy from IBM does this for Lotus Notes, it also has support for POP3 but I've never used that. Plus it's free.

Abby F. Kohnstamm, is that you?

http://www-1.ibm.com/press/PressServletForm.wss?Me nuChoice=biographies&TemplateName=ShowFullBiograph yMain&SelectString=t1.docunid=174

http://www-132.ibm.com/search/701.html

Still have 2 of them.. too bad they are 486 class machines.

The keyboard is quite nice still.

It uses the POWER5 today!

While a 12 ibook was considered small 3 years ago, there are a lot better options when considering a portable laptop. The IBM x40, Fujitsu P series, or the Sony Picturebook are just a few examples.

IBM sells a lot of products and services that are invisible from the slashdot viewpoint. Here is software relating to high-volume printing. See any Linux?

To be fair, while researching this I saw several things supporting Linux now that I wasn't aware of.

But IBM doesn't distribute much GPL code (except internally)

Excuse me? IBM distributes a hell of a lot of GPL code. Every time they sell a server with Linux on it, thats what they're doing. Every time they contribute something to a GPL project, they're essentially doing the same thing.

But IBM doesn't distribute much GPL code (except internally)

Excuse me? IBM distributes a hell of a lot of GPL code. Every time they sell a server with Linux on it, thats what they're doing. Every time they contribute something to a GPL project, they're essentially doing the same thing.

It's an IBM high-end Unix server. Runs Linux too, if you desire. Or both AIX and Linux simultaniously. Pretty sweet machines, and very enjoyable to work with.

IBM p690

There's no point in applying some ideological purity test to Unisys. As Rob pointed out, they speak with forked tongue. Not unlike IBM, who claims to be investing billions in Linux, but recommends Microsoft ® Windows ® XP Professional and generally assumes Windows is the only OS on the planet when they're not putting on their Linux act.

Unisys exists to make money, primarily by selling to big, dumb organizations that have a poor understanding of technology. If Linux is trendy they'll sell Linux. They don't care what slashdotters think. Nobody reading this will buy or recommend anything from Unisys, no matter how "nice" they act, because they simply inhabit a different sphere.

This idea that Unisys "sinned" by asserting their patent rights and should now beg for forgiveness is childish. Companies are moving to exploit their intellectual property. Read Rembrandts in the Attic if you don't understand this trend yet. You think they're going to carve out an exception for free software, when that free software is being used by businesses to make money by infringing patents?

Quit attributing moral good and bad to profit-driven companies. They are all essentially running the same algorithm.

Someone please tap Big Blue on the shoulder, and tell them how stupid it really is. And quit sending me that damn e-newsletter, or you won't be getting my e-business.

FYI, Java's Swing is derived from VisualWorks Smalltalk (and designed by people hired away from the related company at the time). Sun actually tried to license VisualWorks for their settop box project (which Oak, Java's precursor was developed for); ParcPlace would not provide what Sun thought a reasonable licensing fee structure, so they continued with Oak and which was ultimately renamed Java. And if you look at the history of Java, senior developers knew it was missing essentials like closures but pushed it out the door anyway. So there you have it -- we got stuck with Java and all its failed promises because of capitalist infighting among corporations with little care for what was the best technical solution even when everyone recognized what it was. Another reason Java fails is Sun's refusal to freely share one unified codebase, unlike, say Squeak Smalltalk or Python or various free Common Lisps, which lead to write once, debug everywhere for Java, which is what relegated it mainly to server use (although many years later it is now passably stable for some applications).

While derived from SGML, XML is still essentially just a dumbed down version of Lisp S-expressions (admittedly with some namespace and other additions easily handled by various Lisp additions). XML fails at its primary mission (easy data exchange) for two reasons -- one is that any sufficiently large document realistically can't be encoded by hand as oposed to using a structured editor of some sort (so human readable doesn't matter much, and s-expressions would have been good enough), and secondly because the big issue is agreement on the detailed shared meaning of terms and XML by itself has nothing to say about that (as opposed to, say, all the Lisp based AI work which has thought a lot about representation and meaning). Now, the XML community as a broader culture has begun making some headway at shared meaning over the years given all the investment in it, but these points still stand as far as it being originally a poor choice of standard for textual data exchange and a unneeded and hyped approach which by itself ignores the real issues (agreed on meanings for terms) even if those issues can be addressed by other means (which could have applied equally to S-expressions). The biggest advantage to S-expressions prior to years of XML development would have been the triviality to read them with existing free packages (various embeddable Lisp-like systems) and the further long standing already developed ways to then mix data and code for dynamic systems generating dynamic web pages or reports. XML also has some ambiguities in practice as regards authors' handling of whitespace which can drive people up the wall when writing related parsers or formatters (I know this from first hand experience; I helped develop an XSL-FO system to help define that standard (for transforming and displaying XML documents), and I have the hair loss to prove it. :-) See for example: XFC In any case, unlike Java, XML has become quite a useful standard as it has become broadly adopted (like HTML), so I don't mean to scare anyone away from it at this point, many years of hype and investment down the road. But my original point on it being unneeded given Lisp S-expressions still stands.

Actually, for reference Python is my preferred practical language these days, much as I like Python and Lisp, however in the case of Smalltalk that is also mainly for corporate licensing reasons (the greatest Smalltalk IMHO , VisualWorks, is not free). Personally, I think there are some issues I have with Common Lisp in practice (I generally don't like languages with Macros for various reasons), but I don't want to go into them here.

Slashdot is a technical forum; I would expect most people he

Every year, various IBM sites around the world hold a week long summer camp for grade 7 and 8 girls. The do various type of projects including programming Lego Mindstorm robots...

Some of these boxes also have pcmcia support, if you want to go wireless (some also have this integrated). As a backend solution, you have several options like Windows Terminal Server, Citrix, Linux and Sun.

The PPC != POWER architecture. This is about IBM's big iron, not Apple's overpriced brushed aluminum jokes.

IBM still sells mainframes, as well as providing services...

Yup. PowerPC was derived from the POWER architecture; this page: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-po whist/ gives all the details. (My favorite: the PowerPC can run in either big-endian or little-endian mode - although every use I've heard of runs it in big-endian mode.)

POWER == PowerPC, but PowerPC != POWER

POWER is a superset of PowerPC. See here.

First, you have to obtain a copy of GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE and watch it.

Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA "first post" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to join the official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on EFNet, and apply for membership.

Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today!

If you are having trouble locating #GNAA, the official GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is EFNet,
and you can connect to irc.secsup.org or irc.isprime.com as one of the EFNet servers.

If you do not have an IRC client handy, you are free to use the GNAA Java IRC client by clicking here

<html>
<head><title>Adding sections</title></head>
<body>
&nbs p ; <section>
<h>The Web's future: XHTML 2.0</h>
<p>by Nicholas Chase</p>
<section>
<h>Good-bye backward compatibility, hello structure</h>
<p>Why backward compatibility is over.</p>
</section>
</section>
</body>
</html&g t;

A survey with a smaller sample size (200) and conducted in UK in Sept 2003 "shows 26% - or one in four - SMB respondents currently use Linux. Of those not yet using Linux, 15% said they are likely to use it in the future while a further 26% remain undecided".

"The main reasons for moving to Linux given were:
* Lower costs (38%)
* Performance (23%)
* Security (23%)
* Reliability (23%)"

Don't see hating Microsoft there... :) I assume the research done done by Yankee Group was done in the US... so maybe US SMB is just different?

Microsoft 57,086

IBM 319,273 Net Income:

Microsoft US$8.17 billion

IBM US$7.583 billion Revenue:

Microsoft $8.065 billion

IBM $89.131 billion

Looks like IBM is "bigger" in some areas. IBM employs a lot more people and generates quite a bit of revenue compared to Microsoft.

Life guard off duty - Stay out of the shallow end of the gene pool.

I first heard about this stuff back in '99 or 2000. It's pretty neat stuff. The basic idea is that the limit to hard drive density is caused by the horizontal orientation (across the platter surface) of the metallic particles that represent the bits, coupled with the need to have multiple particles for each bit to avoid them changing state at room temperature.

Probe storage partially solves this problem by reorienting the bits in a vertical fashion. Instead of a spinning platter, it has a square chunk of substrate on which the particles sit. Instead of a head arm that moves in one dimension, the head arm contains multiple heads and moves in three dimensions---left/right and front/back to address a bit, then up and down to read or write the bit. By having multiple heads, it is able to read multiple bits at once and concatenate them into a few bytes of data.

Of course, this could be entirely unrelated, but it certainly would be cool if that turned out to be a viable production-quality technology this year.

Well, IBM isn't recommending that anyone deploy it at all just yet.

If you don't want CPU choices, get a Mac!

Hehe, sounds like an implementation issue... you can sync or single-sign-on all three, even with your windows credentials. I'm authenticating our Domino users via Active Directory, which means one password for windows login AND Domino apps. If I wanted to use IIS, I could pass the windows creds transparently (no Domino password to type in).
Check out "Directory Assistance" and or "ADSync", for Domino and SameTime

... a certain company with the coolest remuneration packages ever? And going public soon for tons of moolah?

Code factories *will* work, but they'll only ever be bottom feeders: eating away at overpopulated markets because they're cheaper than anyone else. Companies which produce good quality, innovative products will win. But only - ONLY - if they're good at figuring out what they do best (searching, making computers nobody ever gets fired for buying, making gizmos or allowing interoperativity and catering to the bottom line).

Otherwise - guess what? - that code monkey just took your idea, wrote it for half the price, and took away all your consumers. Tough luck.

There are 64-bit ports of Java already available (from IBM, and I understand Sun is working on one). Porting your application will take some work, but it is possible.

Also -- The .NET framework CLR will be on 64-bits soon. Since the IL already has support for 64-bit datatypes, and no fuzzy "Is an int 16-bits, 32-bits or 64-bits on this platform?" problems, this should be pretty easy for MS to release, and there won't be any porting effort for .NET users.

Chip H.

Let me start off with a disclaimer: I do work for IBM however the following represents my opinions, not that of IBM.

There's a reason that they say you never get fired for going with IBM. IBM has more super-computing experience than anyone. We've got an amazing turn-around capability when it comes to building clusters. But perhaps the best thing with going with IBM is the fact that it builds the relationship.

IBM is very involved with universities especially in the areas of high performance computing. We offer a number of grant programs to help out. I've seen how we handle universities where we make hardware investments. The people handling it really care about making sure things work out well for the students and professors involved.

It's definitely worth calling an IBM sales person about it. If you need a number, feel free to email me and I'll do my best to find you one.

Go Intel! only 7.5 months behind Apple and IBM who collaborated to put out a nice 64 bit solution in August of '03.

I absolutely agree! Certifications only make programmres. And that totally figured in to my research when I chose Northface University. This school is not simply a certification program. (Who in their right mind would pay $60,000 for two certifications!?)

How many programmers do you know that can also interface with the business people? At NU, we're not just tought to code and pass the certs. Collaboration is a hefty focus (few traditional universities teach CS students collaboration) and modelling is core to our education.

IBM Fellow Grady Booch (see bio at http://www-306.ibm.com/software/rational/bios/booc h.html) was quoted in a recent Salt Lake Tribune article (http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_2383658) as saying this about NU:

"When the Northface founders showed us what they were trying to accomplish, it just made sense. The Northface vision falls in line with IBM's quest to maintain a highly skilled workforce so we can continue to develop innovative products for our customers."

Grady Booch is now on NU's advisory board. Another industry leader, Oma Sewhdat (who has held long-time positions such as: IBM Software Group's Senior Manager of WebSphere; and, jCert Initiative President) left IBM to come to NU. His goal: make sure NU lives up to the educational goals he helped research and establish at IBM over the past ten years.

Northface University will give the CS education it's students need.

details of how it is done

60 IBM 3390 Model 3 disks.
Disks

five StorageTek Powderhorn Automated Cartridge Systems. containing 6,000 tape cartridges.
tape library

And the problem is still not N complete, the more data there is the harder it is going to get, not being able to get wiretaps made the problem almost manageable. The right to silence was their luxury. At petabytes of data that is oh lots for every person on the planet.Lets all get with the careless talk.

I am being lazy the numbers are staggering, the data is way beyond for example phone company records.
[Which are allegedly held for 3 years for security reasons. Gosh I feel so secure.]

The main point. He didn't say against open source software, he didn't even say against linux. He said against the linux kernel. So linux distributions wouldn't be covered, neither would other open source projects like MySQL.

How is this great news for open source? Maybe great news for the kernel developers, unless somehow they threaten IBM.

I don't know what Daniel Lyons has to do with this article. It was written by Gary Reback, the attorney representing Sun at the time. Do a search for him. When it comes to patents and monopolies, this guy has a lot of experience.

Found an article by Daniel Lyons regarding ibm and linux. I don't see it as anti linux in any way have a read

Seems IBM hasn't changed it's tune much when IBM compared AIX to Linux a few years back. What I find most disturbing is that Sun gets ripped on for making the same kind of statements. Granted, they could say them better.

I'm a bit confused... Chosing to hire someone with a LA degree is your decision but I've heard guys from companies such as Oracle, IBM, UNISYS, Microsoft, and CGI say they would hire someone from Northface over someone from a regular Liberl Arts college. Don't believe me? Check out IBM's recent press release: http://www-1.ibm.com/press/PressServletForm.wss?Me nuChoice=pressreleases&TemplateName=ShowPressRelea seTemplate&SelectString=t1.docunid=7237&TableName= DataheadApplicationClass&SESSIONKEY=any&WindowTitl e=Press+Release&STATUS=publish/

Hmm... supported by said zealots, like....

Like IBM ?
Like HP ?
Like Oracle ?
Like Novell ?

And primarily only used by zealots, like....

Like Amazon?
Like Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and E*Trade?
Like Autozone and DaimlerChrysler?
Like the 60% of all websites, which are powered by open source software? (admittedly, some Apache servers run on commercial unix, freebsd, and some even run on windows).

Yep... a bunch of slashdot obsessed zealots, who only need to....

So I say, it's time to wake up and realize that what this guy is describing is accurate.

Yes, Daniel Lyons is mostly likely accurate in reporting that FACT that SCO claims to have discovered new evidence.

Wether Danial's OPINION, characterizing it as a "smoking gun", turns out to be an accurate remains to be seen. So far, Daniel Lyons, Laura Didio and Rob Enderle have "cried wolf" many times and not once has a so-called "smoking gun" turned out to be of any consequence. Maybe, just maybe, it will turn out to be important. Until then, perhaps you should "wake up and realize" that Danial, Laura and Rob are themselves zealots who've published many alarmist articles about the merits of SCO's case.

Even if SCO finally has found some evidence to support their case... which is a pretty big "if" considering the history of their performance to date, the impact on Linux of a contractual obligation regarding code released in AIX, but not in Linux, remains to be seen.

In the meantime, zealots here on slashdot, on groklaw, and at Forbes, Yankee group and Rob's one-man-show, the Enderle Group will make their predictions.

Gartner also found that IBM was number one and the fastest growing in Linux servers with 32.4 percent worldwide revenue share, an increase of 1 point of share and 55 percent growth in the first quarter compared to the same quarter a year earlier.

Sales of Linux servers increased 63 percent from 2001 to 2002, from $1.3 billion to $2 billion, Gartner said. The move mirrors a more dramatic 90 percent growth in the United States in the fourth quarter.

Also, IBM's global services will come in and do anything you want. You want them to build a big LAMP implementation for you? They will do it. They will try and push IBM products first, but they don't care if you want Linux, AIX or MS Windows, they will do it for you for a pretty penny.

IBM is doing a great job with Linux IMO by playing in many different fields of the Linux market. Sure they want WebSphere and DB2 on every Linux server. But if not, they would be glad to sell you the server, support and services.