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Under a Big Blue Shadow

Posted by Zonk on from the looks-like-rain dept.

PenguinCandidate writes "Linux server market share numbers can be tricky, with HP touting itself as a leader and IBM garnering all the press. For one analyst, it's all about identity." From the article: "HP can say that it has led the worldwide Linux server market for 29 consecutive quarters. HP can also say with confidence, thanks to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker from May 2005, that it outpaced IBM by nearly eight percentage points in quarterly revenue share. And yet, that Big Blue thundercloud remains. "

3 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Who contributes more. by team99parody · · Score: 4, Informative
    ...another couple huge contributions from IBM:
    • IBM defends Linux in Court, which made by boss realize that Linux is a serious computing platform with (Thanks SCO!!!).
      This shows IBM's willingness to stand by linux within the legal system.
    • IBM, in a move reminicent of drug gangs, got in trouble with their illegal graffiti across san francisco and chicago; giving IBM the street cred they needed so badly.
      This shows IBM's willingness to stand by linux outside the legal system.
    So far I haven't seen HP breaking the law for Linux, so I can only assume IBM loves Linux more.
  2. Re:Who contributes more. by tytso · · Score: 5, Informative

    IBM definitely contributes more in the way of core kernel functionality (it's not just JFS, but also we have a number of engineers, myself included, who publically contribute on LKML and on ext2-devel on the ext2/3 filesystem). I'd have to think hard to think of any HP kernel contributors, besides the folks who work on the architecture-specific Itanium code.... (thinking....) Nope, got nothing.

    That being said, I do have to give snaps to HP for employing Keith Packard and Jim Gettys. Keith in particular has been pretty much the only X developer that has been working on new core features in X11 for the past couple of years.

    But in the final analysis, between IBM making 500 patents available, and all of the IBM developers contributing various enhancements to the linux Kernel, it's really not at all surprising that more people think of IBM when it comes to Linux.

  3. Code talks, BS walks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative
    Selling hardware is one thing, but being a "big whig" in the OSS community means something different: it's all about the code.


    HP donates in some way to about 55 projects, but only a few of them are linux specific. IBM on the other hand contributes to at least 162 projects, 44 of them specific to Linux. So IBM's Linux specific contributions alone number nearly as much as ALL those of HP put together. When you count in the projects that IBM works on that are not Linux specific, they stand head and shoulders ahead of HP in the most important measure: code.