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Kill Bill, IBM vs Microsoft
theodp writes "Though IBM did not invent Linux, does not distribute it and earns nary a penny on it, the computer giant is spending billions in a crusade to make Linux the world's most popular operating system. All told, more than 12,000 IBMers today devote at least part of their time to Linux. To hear IBMers tell it, all this effort is a matter of giving more choices to customers tired of the Microsoft monopoly. But according to Forbes, IBM has a broader agenda--undermining Bill Gates' company in the battle for a new $21 billion market for Web-linked software."
Best quote from the article... "While IBM's products run on Windows, it wants its customers to see how nicely they would run on Linux as well, using the free operating system as a lure. "[It's] Like getting free bread in a restaurant," says Irving Wladawsky-Berger, vice president of technology and strategy at IBM.."
Hmmm.
They don't make money off of selling linux but they do make money off of linux. Just look at thier linux offerings
does this mean that ibm considers microsoft to be winning the battle for web based software?
did you forget to take your meds?
If IBM was REALLY committed to LINUX then they would offer a PowerPC based THINKPAD that came with Linux installed. IBM makes PowerPC processors, IBM sells ONLY INTEL based ThankPads. Don't you see a conflict of intereste there? I think IBM's committment to Linux is true, but yet unrealistic at the same time.
Anything that can undermine Microsoft's ability to come up with vendor-lockin monopolistic "standards" is a good thing in my book. If a user wants to run a machine that lets her do anything and everything that the hardware is capable, without DRM, without Activation, without upgrade fees, without limiting her to ancient versions, then it should be her prerogative.
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we need an alternative to billg's empire. if IBM provides it, well and good. if apple or sega or yamaha or h4x0r provide it, good.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I hear once from a IBM guy that they did not like MS because when they were working on a clustering system, they had asked MS to add a feature to windows, MS said we would get back to you, and never did, IBM felt that MS just brushed them off, so they went with Linux. And thus creating bad blood.
2 of the computer industry giants are squaring off, I wonder who will win if they get in to a no hold back fight, could be fun to watch.
Linux is perfect for a service-based company like IBM:
+ Even if it gets 99% marketshare: no anti-monopoly lawsuits.
+ Total control: build in whatever feature you need for your business.
+ Cheap: concentrate on what YOU need, let somebody else write a driver for that USB toothbrush.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
IBM is trying to get back in the game in a big way.
Federal: for years Sun, SGI, MS and select other companies (including IBM) have had a hold on the federal sector. IBM wants a much bigger piece of that pie as they see $$$$ there. They see their WebSphere and DB2 pillars as major ROI in this sector to the point that they are practically giving the HW away for free if you go the WAS/DB2
Commericial/Corp: MS on the desktop and probably a heterogeous backend network. Does IBM think they can surplant MS on the corporate desktop? Not if they continue to use Lotus notes, et. al. IMHO. MS has them beat there, but could there be a major rework or even junking of those tools with existing OSS projects? I don't know the answer here, but by at least getting Linux in the backend, they protect themselves against a full corporate MS monopoly.
Plus there has always been an uneasy interaction between some of the IBM products and the MS OS. I remember that patching Windows 2000 with a hotfix actually did something to the Windows kernel that prevented IHS (IBM's repackaging of apache) server from running smoothly. IBM would them have to patch IHS to get it working again. I suspect that they didn't really care for those types of tug-a-wars, intentional or not.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
No, really. Somebody find a link (bonus points if you can find an MP3 of the song).
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
They sell a lot of servers running linux and they provide support for them. Those are 2 big areas they make money off linux.
They also have a powerful operating system to use with putting not nearly the effort needed for their own proprietary OS with that kind of power.
Evolution or ID?
IBM may be spending billions on Linux, but none of it is helping me. Every retailer who has looked at Linux at point of sale has run up against the same problem: lack of device drivers.
It really wouldn't make a dent in IBM's Linux budget to provide drivers for the most common peripherals attached to their registers. They need to do it now, or Embedded XP (which is not a bad product) is going to become entrenched, and so continue Microsoft's rise in the POS operating system space.
--
E_NOSIG
...I am starting to get the idea that IBM just might have it in for Microsoft somehow. :) Bahahahaha!
Actually, none of this was new to me except that I didn't realized all of this was happening on such a grand scale! I've seen the TV ads but it just didn't register to me that it was costing them loads of money... (of course it does... I just don't think about it)
I agree that Microsoft should be taken down to the point that they actually have to work and toil to make a good product but it makes me wonder if IBM thinks it can control Linux. Could they be that stupid?
So IBM doesn't care what platform it runs its wares and services on. They make loads of money on their service contracts. I should hope that their business model doesn't change. If it doesn't then the Linux community has nothing to fear at all in my opinion.
Still, it would be interesting to know what portion of this effort stems from simple and pure hatred of Microsoft. Microsoft screwed IBM more than once in the past...
Daniel Lyons of Frobes is up there with Laura Didio and Rob Enderle when it comes to having a clue about anything. These people are mostly pens for hire who will do or say anything to make a buck. I would highly encourage the Slashdot editors to put these people on ignore.
Thinkpads using PowerPC chips would only be able to use Linux.
Or, if they ask their partner Apple nicely, perhaps Mac OS X!
HP branded iPods, IBM branded Powerbooks!
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
So... here's a scenario for you. When IBM has finished beating up on Microsoft and Longhorn is a dismal failure, what will Billy Gates do? Answer: sell a Windows-branded version of Linux. Probably called Lindows.
If that happens and IBM become the new Evil Empire, will everyone on Slashdot bitch about them and support plucky little Microsoft instead? Or is that just too perverse?
And, of course, they're in Flash and Real. ... sigh ...
OS/2 actually IS pretty dead now, but it's not because it was technically inferior. Up to 1999, it still was better than anything MS could put out. Serenity Systems puts out a nice variant that blows Warp 4 and e-Business out of the water, but a little company can only do so much. The PowerPC port eliminated what little technical difficulties OS/2 Warp had. It was exceptional. Therefore, IBM simply had to kill it.
Fortunately, even IBM couldn't kill Linux singlehandedly. They could kill their own Linux business, but Linux will go on. God knows why IBM hasn't gone the way of DEC yet. I guess it's their advertising budget.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
If they and everyone else adopt Linux across the board, we'd just have another monopoly (albeit a much better one IMHO). IBM is promoting Linux as a matter of choice -- users should not be monopolized by one company; they should be able to choose what software they want to run.
USE='clever' emerge -u sig
I disagree.
1. Microsoft still weilds power through vendor lock based on windows in the government and enterprise level businesses.
2. If IBM reduces Microsoft's power by reducing
the use of Windows then Microsoft has less
power/resources to compete with them in
the server/networking/government/business
markets.
The beauty of it is that IBM doesn't have to build an entire operating system or even an entire desktop.
They can build a few miscellaneous apps and release them under the GPL.
Microsoft could try to punish them, but once the apps were out under the GPL MS would not be able to get rid of them.
Steve
No matter how advanced the poduct is all of it eventually becomes a commodity, if the market is big enough. Once that happens, its very difficult for the providers of that product to control the industries it supplies. IBM is trying to jump-start the process(well I think it has already started, and IBM is just speeding it up) so it can capture more control in the direction of the computer/IT industry.
Of cource, thats all in the article... but I like the way I said it better. I've been reading about successfully manageing business in a changing market, by understanding the process in which a new technology becomes a commodity.
Business News and Resources: www.usasource.net
The new era of web-enabled applications is available now and to date is not powered by Microsoft. Using technologies like Laszlo Systems' LPS you can hook a web-deployed desktop app up to any number of XML based web services. This is the whole point of Longhorn and XAML. M$ was scared of Netscape because it made Windows irrelevant, then frightened by Java for the same reason, now they're trying to grab this new space before it matures. Thankfully they're doing too little too late and this genie is out of the bottle. SVG and XUL are cool but won't be good enough in time to stop the juggernaut. .Net and Longhorn become totally irrelevant.
Laszlo has it working now, and the apps run in 98% of the computers and devices hooked to the internet today. All IBM needs to do is add the final piece of the software stack together with DB/2, WebSphere, Linux and the client (Laszlo) then both
As seen on Wired: Get a free desktop PC
Perhaps you will find this enlightening.
Laws of Human Stupidity
Imho Ringer is tired old 20th Century Darwinism rehashed. Following this philosophy traps you at the 'level 2' or 'bandit' stage of development. You should study transactional analysis for a more mature reading of how to understand and manage your greed.
The money is in the enterprise and big government.
I've got three words for you: Open Source Calendaring
It's the calendar and shared contacts that force Exchange on everyone.
So where does LINUX fit in? A strong LINUX means plenty of top-quality apps and to offer customers. And not necessarily IBM apps either. IBM wants to be the integrator, the service company, because it can make a hell of a lot more on billion-dollar contracts with Fortune 500 companies than it can shaving margins on $500 boxes.
Or, if they ask their partner Apple nicely, perhaps Mac OS X!
Or without asking, NextStep. IBM licensed it from Next back in 1988 to use on their RS/6000s. If they had delivered, IBM would have been marketing essentially a PowerPC* OS X** machine back in the 80s, though probably in a more expensive form than your $1299 iMac.
*Yes, I know.
**Yes, I know.
The system is basically an accelerometer which monitor the movements of the laptop, and spins down the HD when there is a risk of impact. I would like to write a Linux driver for it, but I refuse to reverse engineer the windows driver. More info here
RFC1925
It's interesting to see IBM as an underdog, when you're familiar with their glorious days of yore. But it's even more interesting to see that as a company, they've learned from the mistakes they made that brought them down to that position in the first place.
I liked OS/2. Hell, I *loved* it. After messing around with Windows 3.1s slIP support, and the mess that it was, OS/2 was like a dream. The shell was replaceable, and as easy to swap as renaming the file. The PPP support was excellent, and the TCPIP stack was a hell of a lot more robust than the kludgy win3.1.
But it was shit with games. You had to hope for ports or use tricks to make them run.
That didn't bother me a heck of a lot, but it make being an OS/2 evangelist hard. IBMs lack of support didn't help either.
But now they see the chance to give the bully in the playground the proverbial wedgie, and they're building up a force of little guys to help them.
And from the looks of it, they're doing a bang up job. Go IBM! For tomorrow we will scorn you for your success!
In fact if you think about it the most evil pairing of all time, wintel, occured when IBM outsourced something it could have done in house. If they are smart they learned from this :)
So I agree with you except the "want to be in the service industry" They ARE in the service industry. All their other stuff just helps them to be better in it.
They might have to learn another lesson first though. One they haven't learned from the wintel fiasco.
Cheap boxes don't make much profit but they get your name out there. There used to be a time your PC was called an IBM-compatible. Now I get people calling their PC a dell or windows pc.
It is a subtle piece of marketing but where do you think a small business that grew big enough with dells and windows is going to look first for their first big server?
Big companies already know where to find IBM but what about the small companies becoming the big ones?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Microsoft vs. Linux is just like Democrats vs. Republicans.
Linux is for those conservatives on the right who like things that never change and are extremely stable. Simple example are those that for whatever reason can't use anything but the Unix toolset even when they convert to Microsoft. They still need to use cygwin.
Microsoft is for those on the left that want to change things seeing a reason, and don't mind a little uglyness getting in the way of progress. Simple example...do we really need the things that Microsoft is throwing into Longhorn causing yet more instability and insecurity?
There are some on both sides who for whatever reason will NEVER switch...just like Democrats and Republicans. It's just like Coke and Pepsi too.
Computers and software are just tools to get jobs done. For many, nothing ever gets done because they keep concentrating on the tools.
Just my view.
I wonder how one could exploit minor errors in division or random number code one one of those....
I wonder if they can get certified in Nevada, which is much more stringent.
Fellowship 9/11
Another nitpick: the shell in Win 3.1 and 9x were also easily replaceble, just choose your own program in system.ini. I ran command.com as the shell for a while :-). On NT and descendants it's a bit trickier but it can still be done.
Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there were lots of different kinds of micro-computers. There were Atari 800s and STs, Commodor 64s, 128s, and Amigas, TIs, Sinclairs, KayPros, the mighty TRS80, and lots of others including the Apple and the IBM PC. One of them had an open architecture that allowed other manufacturers to build things called "clones". The clone wars followed.
Now the dominant archtecture is the one that IBM pretty much gave away (yes, I remember there were lawsuits). Apple is hanging on, and the others are gone. The final blow to IBM dominance was when they tried a closed architecture with the self-administered nut-job of the PS/2 bus. (I owned a Model 50.) IBM is a lot of things, but hardware monopolist isn't it.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
It also turned out that their WebSphere IDE was not fully functional and up to date on Linux, only on Windows, and the web-based app for running their commerce system used JavaScript stuff that only works on -- you guessed it -- Internet Explorer.
The Enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Is it just me, or is this news really at least 2-3 years late?
I mean, IBM was a sitting duck in late 90s. Then they re-focused their strategy around Linux, and came back as a completely new "big blue", one we can actually *like*.
In y2000, IBM has already been the greatest promotor of Linux, helped open the doors for other Free Software/Open Source in the companies, and got a really nice ROI on this investment - both in term of $$, and in the mindshare.
We are in 2004 now, and someone suddenly discovered all this? Oh, my!
Did you miss the little bit under the animations?? Both Flash and Real are available for Linux, if you don't want to use them, don't complain because the option is there.
... and a depricated one at that.
Not on my 64-bit dual opteron GNU/Linux installation they're not. Nor are they on my PPC GNU/Linux laptop.
Legacy 32-bit Intel GNU/Linux is only a subset GNU/Linux
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I disagree. The AS400 variants out there today are saving many companies millions of dollars. The way the OS isolates applications from hardware means you can upgrade or buy a new AS400 and your applications still work, unlike most thing from M$ (try to run a DOS game on XP, or any older programs). Large companies don't buy shrink wrap software. Payroll, inventory, etc are all custom written, normally in house. After 20 years of use, upgrade, etc, these are easily million dollars programs. How many can afford to switch?
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
The "source code" policy had to be stopped because customer-modified code generated a lot of calls for maintenance, and therefore costs for IBM at that time where the maintenance was still unbilled, I believe.
Now, the question is : "How would they name it" ?
Do you think "OS/3" would be a good choice ? :D
Signature omitted in order to save space. Thanks for your understanding.
I am not that sure about that. After all CMS or CICS were *much* more suited to terminal architectures available at that time (mostly 3278/9 and 3174 control units. On these, you just cannot run anything like vi ;o), but you ease the CPU work to the point where you can have have 17,500 CICS terminals or 2000 CMS terminals connected to a 3033 having... less memory than our present PCs ! :-o
Not that bad :o)
Also, I guess that IBMers were just as clumsy on UNIX than UNIX users were on CMS; and/or any vi-only users on the (excellent!) XEDIT :oD
IBM was probably right at the time; however, true, they were too slow to "move with the market" in time.
Probably it was not accustomed to at the time either ;o) Remember however that IBM mainframes already had these wonderful typeballs 2741 fully-buffered terminals when plenty of their competitors were happy to give Teletype ASR33 and KSR33s ! :-o
Signature omitted in order to save space. Thanks for your understanding.
Oh IBM I have a long history with thee..
You were once a monopoly giant that ruled the PC hardware market when all pc's had an '86' processor. The government struck you down a notch but you trudged on, undeterred. You burned me with your screwy ps2 microchannel architecture ; it died the death it deserved.
Later I felt betrayed as a loyal OS/2 user when you half assed promoted it while fully promoting windows on your own hardware, I swore against all things IBM dropping OS/2 after Warp and moved to a new love... Linux.
Now, here you are again, but this time you've totally redeemed yourself! I ask myself if history will repeat itself; I hope not.
signed,
Disgruntled IBM supporter.
I used to work with an AS/400. Had a drive failure ( dolts ( not IBM ) installing drives had set the input voltage to wrong setting, messed up controller ). The machine halted, warned us about the problem. Dolts came back, made temp fix, got the drive array back up. Machine just resumed what it was about, no additional problems.
We decided to upgrade the processor in our AS/400. The new one was the PowerPC based unit. The old one was whatever was in use before that. I had worked with the IBM service person before, so he let me do the upgrade. Did a PTF like HAL upgrade, shut down the machine, slid out old card with CPU on it, slid in new card with CPU on it. IPL, and away we went. Everything worked just as before, except faster.
emt 377 emt 4
I agree with your first statement, however, OS/2 had much more going for it than being an SNA gateway. It was robust from 91 onward, hardly ever crashing, unlike the ubiquitous BSOD for windows users of all stripes (except for NT 3.1, which was relatively rock-stable, but had no apps). I had uptimes on the order of 9 months, the longest I remember, because I had an update to the kernel to address a specific issue with X-windows client software I was running. This machine ran a variety of services, and for all intents and purposes was much like any unix system of its time, perhaps better than most, certainly for the money.
The last thing I should mention is that after about 3 years of running the os as a mail server, ftp server, and running many large scale models on it (it had 2GB of hard drive space, incredibly large in those days, not even sufficient to load XP these days): a defrag utility came out for OS/2. I remember running it on the data drive, sure the 1GB partition would be fragged to hell and back. After all, my NT 3.5x and NT 4 running colleagues defragged weekly at least on the same hardware! Imagine my surprise when the report came back < 4% fragmentation. HPFS was a great file system. Ahhh, the memories.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Big difference between OS/2 vs Windows battle and what IBM is doing now:
1. OS/2 wasn't free.
2. That was a desktop war, not in the server space.
Apples and Grapefruits.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
It's kind of funny that everyone talks about OS/2 being dead. I just finished a project late last year that was a HUGE rollout of OS/2. Well actually it was removing an OS/2 box and a windows 2000 HDD and replacing the HDD with one with XP and OS/2 in Virtual PC but same difference. This was for a large mortage house that has ~40K desktops. Most of those desktops spend all day in OS/2 and only go out to Windows for Outlook and the occasional other Office app. Sure IBM marketed OS/2 horribly to the home user but they did a pretty good job of selling it into a few large markets and supported the heck out of it there.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.