Linux Ported to IBM's Network Computer Terminals

Bryan Mattern wrote to us with the latest press release from IBM regarding Big Blue and Linux. IBM has now ported Linux to run on their network terminals - specifically the Network Station Series 2200 and 2800.

Comments

Re:Expect Microsoft retalliation

[cjs]

Now, customers will potentially be able to run EXACTLY the same software on their hand-helds and laptops as the backroom boys are running on their mainframes and supercomputers.

What do you mean, `now'? This has been the case for a while now. For the last few years IBM has been running NetBSD on these same NCs that we've been talking about, and NASA has been running NetBSD a AlphaServer 8400s with gigabytes of memory and terrabytes of disk. And now you can run NetBSD on a handheld.

I'm finding this whole Linux revolution rather depressing, now, because it is, quite obviously just a Linux revolution and not an open source revolution at all. IBM built its NCs around an open-source OS and has been providing full support for it for a couple of years now, but nobody (except for a handful of NetBSD developers) cares. They now are either ditching it for Linux or are porting Linux just for show and not to use, either of which is just a fashon statement. And I don't think Linux users really care that IBM couldn't give a damn about open source so long as IBM keeps mentioning the word `Linux' in their press releases.

It seems to me that various interests, including many in the Open Source community itself, are pushing things toward homogenity rather than diversity. I suppose this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise since that tendency has been there from the start: Richard Stallman, for example, makes it quite clear that he wants to see a world where nobody would ever use or write non-GNU software because there would already be a GNU package that is better.

I'm starting to suspect that one day indeed Linux will rule the world. Unfortunately, things won't change much for those who are not part of the ruling class, old or new. Instead of a large company like HP or MS getting special licencing terms for Sun's JVM or Digital's proprietary boot code for the Alpha, it will be Linux, but the other open source operating systems will still be left out. (I use these examples because they have already happened.) And I'll be using Linux instead of Windows, not because it's the OS I want to use, but because I can get drivers for proprietary hardware for it when I can't get enough information to write that driver for my preferred OS. How is the Linux monopoly going to be a change from the Windows monopoly?

cjs