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IBM to Open Projects at SourceForge.net
cfelde writes "On Friday, IBM said it is contributing some 30 open-source projects to SourceForge.net. IBM also said it is expanding its own developerWorks Web site with more resources including training in PHP and other popular technologies." This probably dovetails with IBM's new full on support of the PHP language.
Is my tinfoil hat on too tight?
Is it fascism yet?
It's amazing how well IBM has been transforming itself from the universally-recognized Bad Guy(tm) to a geek's best friend ;) Back in the day, IBM was the Evil Empire of the computer world.
Don't take a knife to a gunfight, or even a knife to a knife fight. Take a gun to a knife fight.
...and I'm glad it was included in this story, since I hadn't seen the prior one.
;) ), I love it. It's easy, functional, and lately, a lot more mature with the OO aspects. (I have one class now that I use for database access, and it makes life so much easier.)
While a lot of people like to knock PHP (mostly Java guys, but hey
With things like PHP-GTK, you can even use it to write applications, and with IBM behind it, things will likely only improve.
libertarianswag.com
Does anyone have a list of all thr projects IBM is helping? TFA didn't seem to have all of them, only a couple
It's amazing how we criticise M$ for not being open and IBM for tring to be open.
IBM learned early on that if you have the Linux community backing a multi-billion dollar corporate entity like themselves, they stand a helluva good chance toppling that Redmond, Washington company they don't like.
They have my vote.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
Sourceforge is the acknowledged place these things
are coordinated, It is great to see a giant like
IBM contributing in the 'commoners' forum.
> but using OpenSource public tools when
> properly funded seems somewhat.. rude, no?
Rude? NO. It is a very good thing.
It is a testament to how good some of the Open Source tools have become.
Microsoft Contributes To Open Source Site
I program in Perl, Python, and PHP. And I work on large (30k line) programs in both Perl and PHP.
PHP is a good language for certain classes of applications including web applications in general. But additionally, you can preprocess any text-based file with it too. This means:
1) Preprocessing configuration files is easy
2) Web apps are easy to build in PHP
3) PHP has a number of features that place it *way* ahead of Microsoft's ASP for enterprise applications. Variable-based includes for example.
That being said, trying to write system administration scripts in PHP is like using a crescent wrench as a hammer. It might sorta work but it is neither elegant nor optimal. Perl and python are much better at this.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
This may seems OT, I am not sure. But IBM sponsored a contest in Sourceforge (with iPODs as prices). It was supposed to announce winners Feb 18 but I still don know what happened. My JAVA-fu were good according to IBM, but I still didn got any notification about who won. :)
BTW, I didn need to code JAVA at all, just use a IBM tutorial-game as example and soved without programing
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
IBM was a rat bastard company ready to meet it's ultimate demise around 1990. Nobody trusted or liked them...except for the fact that IBM was huge.
Then, early in the 90s the stock crashed to about 1/3 of it's 1980s price. And stayed there. That woke the shareholders up who decided that the IBM institution had to be obliterated if anything of the share value could be saved.
Since then, they have gone through multiple reforms. Early on, many of those changes did not improve profits at all. In some ways they became weaker.
Yet...over the last 8 years...I would put IBM in the 'mostly good' category because they decided not to be rat bastards anymore and to do less dammage and more good. A side benifit to this change is that they regained stock value and they didn't end up getting sold for the IBM name alone.
Nobody likes a jerk or a bully -- and it doesn't help the bully very long either. Eventually all bullies either loose friends and increase the bullying (and payoffs and threats) or become nice and benifits from the mutual friendship. That's one of the reasons why a dictatorship is efficient only for a small set of goals that the dictator has while being very wasteful for other goals of society.
IBM like a reformed bully who doesn't want to go back to the old days. There are benifits of not clubbing other kids for lunch money and instead bringing extra gum to share.
The IBM of today does not compete with IBM's customers and is not making plans to grow into IBM's customer's spaces. That's one of the main reasons nobody feels threatened by IBM.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.