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IBM Wants Linux
jsse writes "In a news conference IBM's senior vice president Steve Mills said 'the company will gladly drop its version of Unix from servers and replace it with Linux if the software matures so that it can handle the most demanding tasks.' Now the Giant, along with many other companies, jump to Linux bandwagon. The question is wether this bandwagon is capable of carrying a Giant that huge. Or the question is: can Linux beats AIX?"
The problem I see with this is that if a company as big as IBM wants to use something like Linux, they're going to want some kind of control of the direction it goes. Companies have been trying to get Linus to loosen his 'control' of the kernel for a while now. No company with smart leadership will drop support for a product that they have complete power over, in favor of an OS where they have little-to-no control over the direction that it takes.
However, we've seen that IBM has put a fairly good amount of time, money, and effort into making Linux compatable with their products, and their products compatable with linux itself. But so far, I just don't seem them dropping AIX for Linux anytime soon. Not until the control over the linux kernel becomes more decentralized.
I think when IBM says they'll use linux if it "matures so that it can handle the most demanding tasks," they don't mean "you guys need to build pretty little admin GUIs, and make sure linux is consistent looking." I'm thinking that they're more looking for the ability to scale to a large number of processors, and high amounts of RAM.
On that subject, does anyone know if IBM's Big Iron patches ever made it on to the main kernel tree?
Garc
I'm sure IBM does a great deal of validation testing. Why not tell the kernel developers where things come up short? One of the most valuable development prerequisites are good bug reports. IBM could unleash their testing team. Or does politics get in the way -- the testing team manager doesn't approve of the Linux takeover?
1. As has already been stated IBM has been on the Linux bandwagon for several years now.
2. This makes perfect sense for IBM. They are mainly a service company and secondly a hardware company. Anyone who has done business with IBM knows that they, like most other large computer companies, make their money on installation and support. If they can cut the expense of developing their own OS they can focus on their core business.
(It's crucial that you understand this. While those developers can be thanked for the GNU/Linux implementation, the design and archiecture is stolen-- albeit modifed -- IP.)
... namely from MINIX, which was a minimal, educational recreation of UNIX 7), not stolen in any sense of the word, not even in the "newspeak" sense that the Copyright Cartels and DMCA Apologists have redefined the word to mean.
While you make some good points, I take exception to this characterization of GNU/Linux's similarity to UNIX and its POSIX compliance as "stolen IP." Numerous court decisions, including Apple v. Microsoft, have consistently ruled that compatiblity, compliance to standards, and even the wholesale mimicking of a competitor's look and feel do not constitute a violation of intellectual property in any manner. The design and architecture were copied legally (actually, to be historically accurate, they were copied from a copy
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