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IBM to Hire Firefox Developers

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the pays-to-know dept.

ta bu shi da yu writes "According to news.com, IBM has placed an employment ad for a developer who would be responsible for 'enhancing the Mozilla Firefox Web browser with new features complimentary to IBM's On Demand middleware stack.' IBM might possibly be interested in FireFox integration with their Workplace software. The job is not for just anyone, however, as those who wish to apply for the job should have some cred with the Mozilla development community."

6 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. Just imagine... by elid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...if Firefox starts making it into those IBM On Demand commercials!

    1. Re:Just imagine... by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Interesting
      ...if Firefox starts making it into those IBM On Demand commercials!

      What are you saying? Because Big Blue endorses it the PHB's of the world will embrace it?

      Sorry man, that paradigm died in the 90's. It used to be "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM" Now it's "Nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft."

      IBM is still out-earning Microsoft, but they're getting further away from hardware and are competing with the monopolist in some market segments.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    2. Re:Just imagine... by Michalson · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Depends what kind of office you have. If you're spending most of your time in a word processor, doing documents that need to look a specific way, then Microsoft Office is not going to work well (i.e. the law industry is almost exclusively WordPerfect, because Word just isn't up to the task).

      On the other hand, if you are running an office that works with a lot of numbers (as do most "offices" that act as the pencil pushing arm of a company that does something else), you'll need a spreadsheet program, and nothing currently beats Excel (with the exception of a few scientific setups).

      So in general: If your office is your business, Office is probably not for you. If your office is what supports/manages your business, Office is probably just what you need.

  2. And in another area... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Sam Ruby, IBM employee, Apache/PHP/Atom hacker, is questioning the need for middleware completely.

  3. Loathsome Notes by Salo2112 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Good - currently, Lotus Notes doesn't work so well with FireFox, which forces my users to have to use Explorer. Maybe we'll have another good reason not to use MS Explorer.

  4. Celebrity *programmer*?? by heroine · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So the current darlings of slashdot, IBM, Apple, and Pixar, are on to doing the professional services thing and hiring celebrity programmers to win the contracts, just like VA I.O.U. and Redhat did.

    In the last round VA I.O.U. and Redhat had developers who were also celebrities and hiring celebrity programmers was the way they got contracts.

    Now all the celebrities are executives and programmers are fairly anonymous. There aren't many AOL programmers making headlines the way Rasterman and Mandrake used to. Today the headlines are always made by executives.

    Are they really looking for a celebrity manager to come from AOL and saying the word developer to get on the blogs, or are they still thinking programmers are going to make headlines today just like they did in the 90's?