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The OS Community Embraces IBM
Joel Dutt writes "IBM... 'the corporation known as Big Blue has seen its reputation in the global open-source community shift from suspect sugar daddy to knight in shining armor.' Newsweek has an interesting article in its latest issue, discussing the relationship between the open-source community and the corporate giant."
I was hoping that IBM was going to open source OS/2
But IBM is still a company. They may stand behind open source and believe in it's potential and power. However, they are still a company with shareholders and responsibilities. If something unforseeable happened in the near future and open source software didn't have the potential for them to make billions a year on it, wouldn't they adapt too?
I especially like OpenDX, which I use to visualize data that I collect in the lab: http://www.opendx.org/index2.php
The software has really matured over the years and is now available for a multitude of OSs
IBM---the mega-corporation to end all technological mega-corporations---seeing ANY benefit in Linux?
Then Sun, when they're not against us, is with us.
Finally, Novell sees positives in what we do.
We've all shown the belief that Free software can be profitable. But seeing it in action is something entirely weird and unusual, but in a very satisfying way.
Sun: we build and get you to contribute to open source products to use as the foundation for our for-profit products and then let the "Evil Empire" get said open source project firmly in its sights. Sometimes we are going super hardcore for open source, othertimes we are terrified of it and attack it with wild-eyed zeal.
HP: When we're not whoring to Microsoft, we'll be more than happy to sell Linux to our cutomsters, but then we'll go right back to our buddies in Redmond.
Dell: We are such corporatist tools that if it is remotely risky we won't touch it with less than a 10 foot pole. We'll sell a few Linux boxes, but claim the way most families claim a gay cousin.
Microsoft: I really hope no one has to explain this one to you.
IBM: Linux lets us standardize and save money. We build on Linux a little, we save tons of money, thrash our competition and make tons of money. Invest over $1B today, and we make many times more than that. Not only that, but Linux is a great stick to beat Microsoft with.
I wonder why IBM looks like such a good ally. Maybe it has to do with them seeing the growth of a robust Linux platform and community as the fastest way to them not only getting revenge, but being the preeminent IT company in the world.
No company will actually side with OSS for altruistic reasons, but it isn't hard to guage motives. IBM's motives are the most sympathetic of all of the big IT companies to Linux. IBM sees guiding Linux into the big time as the best way to become a massive force unto itself. Most other companies like to ride the fence and only occassionally flirt with Linux which is the enemy of their ally, Microsoft.
The problem with most OEMs IMO is that Microsoft is more than just a supplier to them. They don't have the business sense to see that dependence on Microsoft Windows means that they cannot act in their own interests if Microsoft makes the XBox2 essentially a real computer for John Q. Citizen. It makes them like a cheap fuck buddy, and when Microsoft is through with Dell, HP, etc they will be discarded as quickly.
The only thing I personally wish that an OEM had the foresight to do, was for Apple to give a few million dollars to the OSI with a tacit purpose of working on the OSX port of open office and general open office improvement beyond that.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Maybe someone else has the exact quote, but didn't Bill Gates say that he sees the future of computers as when people will pay for the OS (subscription of course) and the hardware will be free?
IBM is pushing the opposite. The OS is free and people have to pay for the hardware.
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
Since HP killed thier Open Source strategy thanks to signing "new patent cross license with Microsoft that protects HP in the sort term", they've been nothing but a mouthpiece for MSFT fud.
Remember, HP are the guys who saw the SCO opportunity as a way of trying to scare people into paying HP more for "indemnification from SCO" than SCO was even asking for! And they had the gall to claim that this extortion fee was "support" of linux and accused IBM of not doing the same.
IBM certainly won my respect, thanks to their respect of the GPL.
I think this could be a good thing; Schwartz' jealousy of IBM's reputation could bring out some competitiveness.
The Open Source community will benefit greatly from two companies vying to outdo each other in a quest for our affections by seeing who can contribute the most.
- Brian.
Quoth the insightful poster:
In spite of what the participants in this OSS-IBM fantasy lovefest would like to believe, the "enemy of my enemy"-logic works out in the long term only if you're approximately in the same league as your temporary ally.
Right, to do otherwise is simply to embrace your corrupter. Ask Socrates about that one.
Nevermind, they don't teach that in public schools anymore. Many, if not most, public school graduates can't read their damn diplomas, much less Plato.
I worked at a large publishing company where IBM was pitching a new e-commerce system. They succeeded in concvincing our gullible CTO to buys their whole package, including proprietary hardware and AIX to run on it. When I suggested that Linux on Intel systems would be a better choice for a relatively low-traffic web service like this, they immediately starting running down Linux. They had nothing good to say about open source software in general, implying that the apache server they bundle is somehow a different species from the one anyone can download. In short, they like Linux when they can make money off it, and will rip it to shreds if they think they can sell you something more expensive.
no dork I've ever met didn't like IBM
You should try some of us history dorks.
<quote
IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany -- beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.
</quote
The book is a treatise on why we should be concerned with electronic privacy and data retention. You might trust your current government but who's going to be reading *your* census forms in 50 years.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I don't see anything really "interesting" about the article other than the fact it is in Newsweek.
The fact that the story has reached a major mainstream press outlet means that the stock market will now take notice of what they have seemingly been unaware of this whole time while investing in SCO. I know MS is allegedly behind SCO financially, but the mainstream non-techie stock market traders probably didn't have a clue and thought SCO was just another stock market investment. This article will make them think twice about investing in SCO.
What many people have failed to notice is that IBM provides more to the OSS community than just a corporate image. For the most part, the OSS community little way of inforcing the GPL or for that matter has very little force of it's own (both of these need to change) to protect itself from larger companies (MSFT, SCO, etc). IBM (and it's legal team, money, etc) provide an incubational service to the OSS community by offering a bit of corporate [legal/monitary/etc] power while we build some of our own.
Mak'tal shree lok'tak mek'ta sa'tak Oz! - Daniel Jackson
Wow. You really know that OS geekery has gone mainstream when big players like Newsweeks are writing articles that start off like this:
Open-source geeks are devout in their belief that software should be free to all, and hold as their icon the Linux alternative to the Microsoft commercial empire. As unpaid volunteers who collaborate to develop open source code, they tend to be anti-corporate types.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
says free-software guru Eric Raymond. "Folks like me have an ingrained hatred for lawyers. But at that point hackers will lift IBM's lawyers on their shoulders."
they tend to be anti-corporate types
I would suggest that only a small number of the free software advocates are anti-corporation, anti-business, anti-everything-not-free. It may appear so when you look at Linux distros like Debian, who makes such a big deal out of the idea and purpose behind the software, but I believe that the average FLOSSer is just you're average joe. Well maybe not average...
From looking at the comments posted on slashdot, it seems that most of us are reasonable people, able to understand the benefits of an open market. The only thing is that we believe that free software can be part of this market. From TFA, you'd think we're all living in communes!
Therefore I don't find it that unbelievable that the OSS community would accept IBM as our knight. The only thing we object to is a company taking advantage of the freedoms that our software and the GPL provide. We don't hate the idea of a big company (after all, many of us get our paychecks from one!), we just don't like being abused by them.
On a slightly different tact, I would also suggest that Novell has been a strong defender, perhaps taking bigger risks than IBM. Novell is in direct competition with Microsoft, and has been so for years! And more to the point, they still pull a profit! IBM has a different focus than Microsoft, but Novell is right in the line of fire. Despite that, Novell manages to completely embrace SUSE and Ximian and turn it into a corporate backed project with a real future. Now there's a hero!
Either way, seeing the media begin to accept FLOSS as a viable business method is a good step. We've known it for years, and clearly some corporations (IBM, Novell) knew it as well. The only real hurdle left is the media and the public. When these are overcome, we'll start to see real competition between the proprietary and the open source camps.
As someone who has worked with and against Big Blue (note, not for), it appears that most of IBM's margins now come from offering services on top of their products, whereas in the past their profit came from hardware and products.
So the move to support Linux implies that IBM sees more service revenue coming from the Linux model. If so, and assuming that IBM wishes to maximize revenue, does this mean that Linux sales represent more volume, and/or does IBM see Linux as requiring more service than its other products? What will happen in the years to come when Linux systems become as user-friendly as a Mac and no longer require extensive servicing to maintain a working infrastructure?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Don't bother to RTFA. It is the most inaccurate piece of hogwash I have seen in a long time. The corrections portion is the most interesting.
The original article claims that SCO was formerly Santa Cruz Operation, that its stock was delisted from the NASDAQ, and other amusing mistakes. It almost seems like an ill-informed attempt to bash Microsoft, which is truly odd because they are a partly owned subsidiary....
Indeed MSNBC has tended to be far more interested in Linux than the rest of the press. Maybe I need a tinfoil hat, but I am beginning to wonder if it is a Microsoft plan to hype competition as a way of saying "We are not a monopoly."
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I disagree. Way back in the early 80's when I was graduating from college, IBM was thought of by the "smart" tech crowd in VERY much the same way as Microsoft is thought of today. If there were a slashdot crowd in 1981, they would have bashed IBM left and right for monopolistic behaviors.
The geeks were enthusiastic about Dec, HP, and later Sun.
I remember my college interview with IBM. Our college had a bidding system to land the coveted job interviews with the campus recruiters. MANY Seniors bid ALL their points for the year to get an interview with IBM. (I wouldn't necessarily call these people the "smart" crowd.)
I scooped up an interview slot for no bid-points when there was an interview candidate who didn't show. Even though I had deep-seated negative feelings toward Big Blue, I knew it could be a great job out of school. Toward the beginning of the interview, I asked the guy about the position he was interviewing for. "Oh, there's no position available. We just do these interviews for the P.R." I ended the interview, politely telling him what I thought of that! No sense in wasting my time. The 25 students that wasted all their interview bid points were furious when I walked out and told them!
Of course, I got a "ding letter" a couple weeks later.
If IBM wants to help open source, then offer some of the developers access to their patent filling system. If they were fully behind open source for the reasons they state, there isn't any problem with them offing to fully cover the costs associated with getting 100 or so patents. The open source community can't protect its self without a patent portfolio and IBM knows that.
Don't forget, IBM was the MSFT of the 1980's in so many ways.