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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
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.
[
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).
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
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.
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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.
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.
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
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!