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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."
hasn't IBM stood behind Linux for quite some time? They've always pushed hardware that is somewhat Linux specific.
Not to mention, no dork I've ever met didn't like IBM. They make solid machines. Pretty good software. So what's the problem?
10. I've Been Moved
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8. Idiots Buy More
7. Impossible to Buy Machine
6. Incredibly Big Machine
5. Industry's Biggest Mistake
4. International Brotherhood of Mercenaries
3. It Boggles the Mind
2. It's Better Manually
1. Itty-Bitty Monopoly
Well ofcourse they're well liked, I mean they fight off the evil SCOmonsters that try and terrorize the city everyday.
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?
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.
They really have done some great things for the open-source community. Howerver, by being affilated with the open-source community, they ultimately get more buyers of their products. This helps erase the market share of its competitors. Just something to think about.
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is my friend.
Linux and IBM, strange bedfellows indeed. IBM is every bit the big, evil, monopolist corporation that RMS and the rest of the Linux zealots rail against. IIRC, IBM, too, is a "convicted monopolist" just as M$ is and Apple tried to be. The only difference is, IBM succeeded where Apple failed - they had the hardware *and* the software lock-in. What was the saying? Oh yeah, "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Today, replace IBM with Microsoft. By the way, how many American jobs has IBM shipped to India or replaced with H1Bs under the pretext of a labor shortage? And how much of the same has IBM helped others do under the same pretext through their consultancy, IBM Global Services? But since they've chosen to embrace Linux because it's in their short-term self-interest to do so, all of their many sins are forgiven.
Make no mistake about it, IBM doesn't give a ripshit about "the community" or anyone/thing else other than the Almighty Dollar. The only reason they're fighting SCO is because they're heavily invested in Linux as a way to compete with Microsoft. If IBM felt that it was in their short-term best interest to wipe Linux off of the face of the Earth, they would.
Why do I half expect to hear one day soon:
IBM: Linus, I am your father!
(Queue Imperial March)
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
I am a frequent reader of Jonathan Schwartz' blog, and one of his constant themes/rants is that the open source community respects IBM more than it deserves.
In my opinion, other companies (i.e. Sun) are jealous of IBM's unique position and would like nothing more than to ruin that relationship.
IBM, while not entirely faultless, has taken a huge risk in tying some of its business and marketing campaigns to the success of Linux. Even while having AIX. I wish the same could be said for Sun. Glad to see it's paying of for IBM, in the form of profits and community goodwill.
IBM, last time I checked, made something like 45% of its revenue from hardware and 35% from consulting. Software accounts for a paltry 15% (the rest they make from finance). IBM is not in the software business, really. They make AIX so they can sell RS/6000s. They make VisualAge so people can write desktop applications for DB/2 databases, and they make DB/2 so people will buy mainframes. The consulting part of IBM is fairly vendor-neutral; I've worked with them to implement BEA WebLogic on Solaris instead of WebSphere on AIX for example.
Software is an overhead for IBM. It's a distraction from hardware and services. Open Source allows IBM to sell hardware and services without having to pay to develop the software to run on it and/or implement on behalf of customers. That's the reason, and the only reason, IBM is into Linux.
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!
Sure, they make hardware and sure, they sell software. However, they have legions of consultants that make money providing SERVICE to their clientele. Supporting software and tools that are both inexpensive/free and easily (freely?) maintained only helps their consulting business which is probably where their highest margins are. You have to sell LOTS of computers and peripherals to make the same profit you make by parking a dozen consultants at a customer location for 6 months.
Cheers,
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.
My impression of IBM is that they would prefer not to be in the operating system business.
Even more, it is my impression that IBM would also be out of the software market as well, and comoditize it instead. The most profitable part of a solution is in professional services.
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.
"Open-source geeks are devout in their belief that software should be free to all..."
"...and what the open-source community sees as a Microsoft front company bent on destroying their free paradise."
Once again, the linux community is portrayed as a bunch of geeks pinching pennies, not worried so much about free software but rather free (as in healthy beer) software.
IBM realized that the software industry would change the most from the era of the Internet, unlike hardware and consulting services. A company expecting to make its bread and butter from software will be in a constant rush to stay one step ahead of thousands, if not millions, of unpaid software developers who write software for no other purpose than to have it the way they want. The Internet made it possible for those legions of volunteers to congregate internationally, as well as publicize and distribute for free.
If only other companies had the vision to look that far ahead and make the hard decisions necessary to evolve.
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
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
- Verbal, The Usual Suspects
scott king
The rest is open-source history.
Interestingly, IBM's embracing Linux is one of the factors eliminating Sun as a viable competitor in the market for highend servers. 6-sigma Linux, backed by an army of free programmers and advice-givers, versus closed proprietary Solaris is tantamount to a battle between a F-22 (stealth fighter) and a Mig 17. No contest.
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.
Microsoft did save us from the hardware lock-in single vendor world that IBM was trying to create. The result is that "PC" hardware sells at just above cost and is available from a widge range of vendors offering an even wider range of possible products.
Now we just have to do the same thing at the OS and office suite levels and...
What would Ayn Rand have against Linux? Linux isn't communism.
Open source is either a hobby or a different business model -- and that includes the GPL. Programmers contribute to open source or free software for a number of reasons. Sometimes it's to acquire status (i.e. make business connections); sometimes it is to develop a product and establish themselves as experts in that product, which will then make it easy to position themselves as consultants; and sometimes it is merely for the joy of working on something cutting edge with a group of other intelligent, motivated people.
What in the above is anti-capitalistic?
The phenomenon that is open source or free software merely illustrates that there are a lot of talented, motivated, and ambitious individuals in programming. Additionally, it arises from the fact that software is difficult to design. A small shop or lone consultant could not design meaningful, robust software (barring very few exceptions). Open source is a way for small entrepreneurs to strike out on their own.
Sure, there are "hippies" in open source -- but so what? A capitalistic society makes room for free software as it does "free love."
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.