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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."
one spot likens Linux to an omniscient child prodigy who resembles Eminem.
....and Twins.....
Maybe that's what Linux needs to cross over as a mainstream desktop OS? Celebrity endorsements!
Imagine ads featuring Colin Farrell beating up his Windows PC and putting out cigarettes on the keyboard! A Dawson's Creek ripoff where Katie Holmes's "private, amateur photography" gets lifted off her computer through because she happened to be running an unpatched IIS, part of the default Windows 2000 installation.
Or, best of all, Snoop Dogg chillin' with a bunch of penguins in his own language resource center, showing them all kinds of shizzle on his Thinkpad laptop running KDE.
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.
All in favor of overturning evil software monopoly and rooting for evil hardware and software monopoly say "Yes!"
They don't make money off of selling linux but they do make money off of linux. Just look at thier linux offerings
"IBM has a broader agenda--undermining Bill Gates' company in the battle for a new $21 billion market for Web-linked software."
What? You say IBM has an agenda? They don't support Linux just to spread peace and love and free software? Quick, stop the presses!!!
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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With the announcement of IBM's new per user subscription model web applications (last week, was it?), I can see how this is a certain possibility. What better way to promote platform independence than to market an alternate operating system AND show off your new web apps in use on it? Intelligent marketing for Big Blue.
They could do it a lot faster by making the pieces that regular people ( ie not slashdot users ) still miss when they look at the linux desktop.
Microsoft still gets most of its strength from vendor lock based on windows.
Give people an alternative desktop that asks no sacarfice on their part and you kill the giant.
IBM has the resources to do this.
Steve
Nah. Paris Hilton going "so I was using windows, and then it was, like, bleep bleep bleep, and I'm like, what? bummer."
Just animate tux!
He could be a national icon, like mickey mouse or toucan sam.
The question is, what kind of voice would he have? A swedish accent? bork bork bork?
no
The fifth ad campaign by Quentin Tarantino.
Starring David Carradine as Bill Gates
Michael Madsen as Steve Ballmer
Uma Thurman as The Bride (Tove Torvalds, avenging her dead husband Linus, her reign of bloody revenge sponsored by IBM)
and Chiaki Kuriyama as Gogo NT, the prototype Microsoft Killing App. (because really, when you're dealing with this stuff, you need a killer android, preferably Japanese in a schoolgirl outfit, for the sheer surrealism factor.)
Brazil has decided you're cute.
Sounds like IBM's ROI could be higher if their marketing were smarter. Then again, does it matter to OS if HP gets more Linux business than IBM does?
Remember, IBM is prone to the same sorts of behaviors as Microsoft.
They are not doing this out of kindness, and if IBM can take advantage of the situation down the road, they will.
Just be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Looked dead, didn't I? But I wasn't. But it wasn't from lack of trying, I can tell you that. Actually, Bill's last OS put me in a coma - A coma I was to lie in for four years. When I woke up, I went on what the movie advertisements refer to as a 'roaring rampage of revenge.' I roared. And I rampaged. And I got bloody satisfaction. I've squashed a hell of a lot of competitors to get to this point, but I have only one more. The last one. The one I'm driving to right now. The only one left. And when I arrive at my destination, I am gonna kill Bill."
(Apologies to Tarantino)
Happy people make bad consumers.
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
If and until IBM adopts Linux across the board themselves, it appears that they're talking out of both sides of their mouth. This came up before, and a number of IBMers said that it was impossible to get off of Microsoft entirely, mostly due to Windows specific apps (such as MS Project)--that may be so, but then how do you reasonably expect the rest of the world to adopt Linux?
And it's bullshit anyways--I understand IBM to have more than a few of their own coders. With enough will, you could rewrite the apps that you need, and then release them back to the OSS community, and the world will indeed thank you for making a migration from MS possible, for themselves as well.
Frankly, it'd be like going to Apple and finding that they all use Vaios. Hint: they don't. They do use MS applications, but they do so on Macs, like Office. And those that don't work on Macs--like the POS system for their retail stores--they port so that they do. What do you think would happen to sales of Macs if the you walked in and saw an IBM POS at the checkout counter at the Apple Store?
IBM has the opportunity and the resources to make their migration from Windows to OSS fodder for whitepapers and PR for decades to come. It's illustrative that they haven't yet, and I think it's a cautionary tale for any other company considering the same move.
--
$tar -xvf
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
Though IBM did not invent Linux, does not distribute it and earns nary a penny on it
Has IBM ever made money on an operating system? I thought it was generally understood that IBM's business was selling "solutions"; the whole kit - hardware, services, support, customization, consulting.
Does OS400 run on an IBM AS390 mainframe? (serious question!)
An operating system is just part of the package for IBM - they obviously like Linux for small/medium business environments; people are probably less scared of Linux than AIX/OS400/etc, since there is probably more (and cheaper) non-IBM support for Linux based solutions. I guess in that sense, Linux is the Windows of the Unix world as far as support goes - everyone and their dog knows it.
Whether it's running Linux or not, you're still going to pay through the nose for an IBM kit. I honestly can't see how spending money/resources on Linux could be directly aimed at Microsoft any more than if they spent it on AIX. Perhaps Linux just gives them more bang for buck and makes business sense?
But according to Forbes, IBM has a broader agenda...
Yes. This is because IBM is what we call a "company" which exists to make money. Obviously there's a profit motive. This isn't some dark secret.
I'll say this about the article, though, it's pretty good for a Lyons piece. Looks like he finally was able to dig his head out of his ass.
Do you have ESP?
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...
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
IBM are pro Linux whereas DELL and HP are selling Linux just to keep certain customers happy but are ultimately MS puppies.
"HP recommends Microsoft Windows XP for business" is all too often in adverts for their hardware and they couldn't be more in each other's pockets (HP and MS). But this is business and HP and DELL will do whatever it is that makes them the most money without putting themselves in 'jeopardy'.
Whereas IBM has a history of conflict with MS and are in no way trying to keep in the MS good books. Linux is the perfect vehicle for them to sell services and at the same time disrupt the MS server (and soon desktop) monopoly.
When a company advertises Linux on TV you know they are serious about it.
Good for them.
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.
"IBM's Linux pitch is either stupid or insincere. I think it's a little bit of both. It's not a sensible strategy for IBM in the long run," Zachmann says."
I am not so sure about that. In 2001 Thomas Schenk's article compared Linux with AIX and found it wanting in terms of enterprise support. Clearly Linux has come a long way since then.
In 2003, Steve Mills, senior vice president of IBM's Software Group said Linux is the logical successor to AIX
For the customers, it sure would be nice not to have to pay AIX licensing fees.
Have you Meta Moderated t
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 found a small company that makes machines just like this! They have a web page here.
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
Sure OS/2 has now lost. Simplest reason? It became isolated, just try to find a programmer for OS/2.
But their hardware continues to be very very good. Maybe not the best maybe not the fastest but simply good. Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM is still true. Sure people do get fired for going over budget and buying IBM is a sure way of doing that but there are still enough places that can afford IBM's prices.
They also supply one thing nobody else does. A world wide total solution provider. If you have something to do with computers were ever you are IBM can help you.
And here this IBM ad ends.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
How are all the Linux boosters out there going to feel when you wind up trading one dictator for another?
People want to get rid of Microsoft, or at least greatly decrease their power, so much so (and to a large extent for good reason) that you can't see that IBM will take their place in a heartbeat if they can.
Many of you may be too young to remember the days when "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" because IBM ruled the computing world, flat out. Hell, *I* don't even remember those days personally, but I've heard the stories from people that were there, and IBM was in most ways just as bad as Microsoft. They used pressure sales tactics, made deals with companies that weren't in anyones' best interests but their own, and generally didn't play fair in many instances. They'll pull the same tactics out of their hate and monopolize the world just as surely as Microsoft has, first chance they get.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. IBM is setting themselves up to again prove that cliche true, and so many people don't have a problem with it because Microsoft is the defeated other party.
Be careful what you ask for folks... you just might get it.
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
Easy moderators: The title is meant to be provocative, not an endorsement. Please read further.
It's good IBM is spending the resources to make Linux a more viable competitor to M$. Go IBM Go!
That said, what is it that keeps "Windows" synonymous with "computer" in the minds of the important people (CIOs, managers, grandmas)? Marketing. Remember, it's not Outlook, it's *Microsoft* Outlook. It's not Exchange2003, it's *Microsoft* Exchange2003. Microsoft made an important decision to have their products be inseperable from the Microsoft brand. It's all Microsoft, regardless of what you're using. Got a PC? Unless you built it yourself, you probably have (or had) a "Designed for Windows" sticker on there somewhere. And notice that on those dark cases that Dell, IBM, etc. are using now, what do you see? A big dark box with a colorful sticker. It's like the seal of quality, an assurance that you're getting something easy and familar (actual experience may differ from promise).
What we need, and what IBM's endorsement has not yet brought, is that same "promise of quality" that can be readily understood by anyone and *trusted* by everyone. Face it, with Windows, you know what you're getting, for good or ill. Linux just doesn't have that yet. Maybe it's the fragmentation of distros (Suse likes KDE, Redhat likes Gnome, etc.) As we can see over and over again, people don't buy the superior product, they buy the product they have been convinced into buying.
As an analogy, I offer this from my own life: I was in the store buying groceries. I needed peanut butter for sandwiches. I've been a lifelong JIF user, but JIF is kind of expensive. So I'm checking out the generics and store brands. All a bit cheaper, but not too much, and frankly, I don't know anything about them. They could taste better than JIF, but I don't want to be stuck with an open jar of crap peanut butter if it doesn't. The price isn't much different, so I suck it up and buy the JIF; I just don't want to run the risk of being disappointed. In my mind, JIF is the gold standard and until I am convinced otherwise *by external forces* I am probably not going to change. It's not that I don't want to, it's just that I am afraid of being disappointed and out some $ for a failed experiment.
Thus, I believe we need something, someone, to create that buzz that will usurp the idea that Windows is the good, safe choice. If I can get my grandma to ask for a pc and know that she wants Linux, and not Windows, then I think we will truly have succeeded.
You can use swfextract from swftools to extract the audio track from a flash file.
I prefer my evil to come from a company with a long history of evil. IBM got the history. Would you trust some tiny little upstart or a company that is now in its 3rd century of spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Denial? MS is still learning Slight-anxiety, Bit-of-doubt and Feeble-counter-argument.
Also the penguin logo is so much cooler. You can make him cute and cuddly or a fearsome killer penguin.
MS got some four colored thingy and a butterfly. Tsk. Might as well use a fruit and really show what kinda customers you expect to attract.
Anyone else find it humorous that MS logo is a bug?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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
My current employer used to make loads off of AS/400 and System/36 work, but lately everyone has come to the realization that cheaper hardware and OS'es can do things better, faster and just as reliably. Four years ago the mantra was that "you know an AS/400 will never go down!" But after the latest rounds of PTFs, services packs and OS upgrades have wrecked havoc on working installations people have taken a second glance at that opinion.
The AS/400 is a great piece of hardware, no doubt. Their RAID controllers, massive RISCs and reliable hardware are fantastic for stable servers with 24/7 uptime. But OS/400 just can't take advantage of it. If you want to have hardware abstraction to the point that Sys/36 code from 1960 can still run you just aren't going to milk all the performance points you can out of the hardware.
One of the first things IBM did was get Linux running on an AS/400 (now eSeries). And I'm sure it wasn't a hobby project. They've got the hardcore hardware, now they need to get the industry behind a new common OS so they can sweep their OS/400 legacy under the rug. And good riddance, too.
This may seem a surprising thing to do, but in fact it makes good sense to commoditize the products that complement your own. For IBM, a hardware vendor, that's the OS. For Microsoft, an OS vendor, that's hardware.
For the last twenty years, Microsoft has been extraordinarily successful in commoditizing PC hardware. This has not been good news for IBM (though most of IBM's problems over that time have more to do with a misperception of where the market was going). Now IBM is turning the tables on Microsoft by commoditizing Linux, which if successful, will drive down the price of Windows and make it more affordable to buy computer hardware.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
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
*Linux versions of these players are available. Get the free Linux plug-ins for Macromedia Flash and RealPlayer.
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
As someone else has pointed out, IBM has figured out that software commoditization is well underway and that soon there won't be any money to be made from COTS--a fact that Microsoft seems either to be oblivious to or afraid to acknowledge. So of course IBM embracing F/OSS is mostly a pragmatic move on their part. I don't see anyone here posting that they think IBM is doing it out of the goodness of their heart.
Most people that I've seen are glad that IBM is supporting F/OSS, but that doesn't mean that they implicitly trust them. Get real.
At the end of the day, you just have to face the fact that foo bar baz.