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IBM's assault on Microsoft
Kelly McNeill writes "osOpinion has an
excellent editorial piece which talks about IBM's recent refocusing efforts
including supporting Linux as well as making alliances with major Linux players
in an effort to knock Microsoft from its current standing in the Industry.
" It's a good point-although it seems strange sometimes, thinking about the old, bad IBM, and comparing it to now. I hope that we don't forget, however, that ultimately IBM is a company, and they are looking out for themselves.
Lets not confuse open vs open source.
Lets not forget that IBM lost a lot of momentum while it was fighting anti-trust suits for a decade or two.
If you've been following the anti-trust trial, Microsoft really stuck it to IBM.
But IBM is certainly hitting back now.
This testimony yesterday about MS's attempts at "horizontal restraint" as to what IBM should and shouldn't have bundled with its machines looks pretty devastating.
All proprietary operating systems are Bad. O/S2, AIX, OS/390, OS/400. IBM will only be a truly enlightened company when it realises this and opens it operating systems.
I doubt IBM really cares about Linux on the desktop (including MWave drivers, KDE, Gnome, Mesa, etc.).
None of the big commercial entities who get cited by Linux advocates as the reason "we have won!" care about Linux on the desktop. Look around. It's all server stuff that's happening. The desktop is still primarily being advocated at the Linux-only vendors, and a few holders of old failed DOS/Windows software like Caldera and Corel.
Compaq won't be selling Linux preinstalled on desktop machines anytime soon. IBM won't be doing that either. They're positioning Linux to compete against NT Server for low-end/high-volume tasks where Linux works acceptably.
So, the gist of it is that IBM is going to use Linux as a club to beat Microsoft with. Why does this make me worry about the continued survival of Linux as we have come to like it?
I've never seen a Microsoft commercial on TV that states "You should use Microsoft products because we're the established brand."
What channel are you watching? My TV just gets advertisements from companies that are competeing in a marketplace.
Not to mention how much fun it would be to see Mr. Jobs and Mr. Torvalds double-team Mr.Gates. I'd pay good money to see that!
Can you be so sure that it wouldn't be Jobs and Gates double-teaming Mr. Torvalds?
They're still more evil than Microsoft. No question.
Win-OS/2 is pretty good, for Win3.x apps. It doesn't support Win32.
Also, it's just a copy of Win3.x slightly modified running under a DOS emulator.
Personally, I want to see OS/2 open-sourced. The WPS GUI is still better then anything else out there. And the object-oriented stuff under the hood provided for a number of great enhancements like Object Desktop. Without recompiling.
The problem is, it only convinces people who have never competed in the marketplace. Anybody in the industry knows that it's a dog-eat-dog world, and all the players do what they must to get the sale. Government bueraucrats, lawyers, and academics don't understand because they've always existed in a non-commercial world. (where the competition is in many ways just as ruthless, but in different ways)
The companies out for blood against Microsoft are largely competitors who've lost, because consumers (individual, and institutional) have bought their products elsewhere.
The intellectuals out for blood against Microsoft are people who don't have a clue about how business is conducted in the modern world, and who are easily manipulated by other players in the market who do. Some of them even foster visions of an anti-corporate socialist future. They could really dig the GNU stuff, since they've got a staff who would administer it all for them anyway and they'll never need to poke beneath the hood and see the mess it is. Let the help clean it up.
The public in general just knows they've seen a hundred movies in which the big evil company has always been wrong, and that a dynamic hero always comes along near the end of the show to save humanity. But they've come to like their PCs running a Microsoft OS, they get along fine using AOL to browse the web, and if you tried to take it away from them all hell would break loose.
Second, M$ became a trusted name to business because the letters "IBM" were on the outside of the box. Nobody bought a PC because M$ wrote the OS. They bought them because IBM put their name on them.
Don't try that one on all the thousands of people who bought clones in the 80's and early 90's. They bought PCs because it didn't say IBM on the box.
Second, PC's would probably be much more reliable. While you can fault IBM for lots of things, you have to admit that they take reliability very seriously.
If IBM could do it again, personal computers would certainly be more reliable, because they'd all still have an IBM nameplate on the outside, and the hardware would be far more uniform (and bland.) They tried to recapture the market by releasing OS/2 to run only on their new Microchannel architecture. But by then the genie was out of the bottle, and OS/2 failed (after they conceeded they'd lost the hardware monopoly, they tried to push a new more open OS/2 on clones all over the place, but somehow couldn't convince their competitors in the hardware market that it would be a good thing to preinstall an OS from a competing hardware manufacturer).
It makes good sense that now they'd like to regain a cut of the marketplace any way they can. If it involves sicing the government on their competitors, so be it. Losers in the marketplace can always call in the government.
Maybe it will be whomever has the most successful closed version of a Linux-derived OS when the GPL is overturned in court.
Proprietary operating systems are doomed. Linux in it's current incarnation may not win the home desktop but I guarantee 15 years from now, the dominant desktop operating system will be a free software package. I can't even really describe my rationale yet so I guess I can't expect anyone to believe me. It's just so obvious to me now. Epiphany?
It's not shit of their own making, though.
Mr/Mrs Literal,
The original poster said "Basically states" which does not refer to the literal content of the comercials. Most Microsoft ads don't have a single product as its focus but a mix of images of many of their products being used for many different thing. I think that is where the orginal poster felt the ads were selling the Microsoft brand.
There is a difference in competing in a marketplace and restricting competition in a marketplace. Since you don't seem to understand concepts this means that Microsoft restricts competition with its products by using it dominance. This is not competion in the marketplace and there are laws to stop this from happening.
: but Linux in its current form doesn't have what it takes to beat windows at its own game, the home market and especially among newbies.
It doesn't yet.
This is changing and as a linux developer of commercial apps I am betting on this. Linux has the hype, linux is awesome, and linux has the critical mass.
I have never used BeOS, so I'll take your word that it is better. But BeOS has not the hype or the critical mass. BeOS is dead, or atleast that is my opinion as a professional developer. So you see, if my opinion is also the opinion of the majority of the other developers out there, then BeOS will be starved for apps, and it will in fact die. It's a self fulfiling prophecy.
If I thought any differently I'd be working on a BeOS port. Fact is a Solaris port makes much more sense, it is simpler to do since Solaris is also UNIX and X Window based and Solaris has more users, and that is users with money!
But, if the Death Star is Windows 2000, they would not be able to destroy a planet without rebooting, and it would not be that hard to find potential security breaches in the perimeter... and the trash compacter that they get stuck in is that the recycle bin? oh nevermind.
Wasn't she the women's karate champion of Finland?
>Losers in the marketplace can always call in the government :)
The government can't do squat unless laws were broken. Losers who lost by illegal means have a right and an oblication to fight back. If the laws can't be applied then the end of this BUSINESS game is at hand. By the way, the IBM employee was called up by the DOJ and didn't walk up and knock on their door. There are also 19 States involved in this too so either there are a few very powerful 'losers' or a whole lot of 'losers' who feel wronged. After all, using the law is part of doing BUSINESS.
As soon as Linux can run on the same calibre of hardware that AIX does, IBM may well consider it. Until then, however, don't count on it.
Give Linus a couple of Emporer Penguins to tag team with and he's a shoe in. Those guys'll poke out the eyes of all comers!
The icon gets on someone's desktop either because a sw installer-wizard put it there, and made sure the executable went into standard bin location or it adjusted the PATH when it installed the executable and the icon. Or someone with knowledge of the working .desktop file and the location of the icon made the move and linked the icon to the executable. In either case, the 8 year old doesn't know how the icon got there, but the process of it getting there ensures a very high probability that clicking on it _does_ something. On the other hand, how many times have you invoked a program from the CLI and had nothing happen? In the event of trouble, you have to either remember ./programname or fullfreakinpath/programname or put program in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin or add pathtoexecutable to $PATH (eg /usr/local/Acrobat4/bin/acroread) or symlink from /usr/local/bin to fullpathtoexecutable) No, the CLI environment is not intuitive since what we mean by intuitive in the context of GUI design and useage is not just no-need-to-think, but really, no-need-to-be-ready-to think)
Ppl really do use Windows and started using Windows because DOS and the CLI are more difficult for them. The price is that they are locked into what that particular GUI shell says is possible or appropriate at any given moment. Hey, where's "exec wmaker " in the Start button ? But they are not wrong about the GUI being "easier" and "intuitive". Their fear/comfort zone defines the terms easy and intuitive. App foo will just have to respect that if it is intended to reach a broad audience.
shut up
How about an IBM branded Linux? If Corel can do it, IBM certainly can...it makes perfect sense to customize it with their hardware. Since MS will never do it, IBM is primed to take over this OS--plus, which would the average consumer choose, Red Hat and their variants, or the Big Blue label?; I'm betting the latter. Then they can co-brand it with Smart Suite, a la Corel. Just a matter of time...
Hmm,
I studied EE in university some 25 years ago, when we used punch cards and card readers, so I guess I'm a cross between a techie and newbie. Does that make me a 'half-a-cluebie'?!
I picked up a used P75 last week for $100, and just bought Caldera Linux for $30. I'm going to try to install this weekend. If a bonehead like me can get it done (and it comes with Corel Office bundled), I'd say it addresses the home market pretty well. I'll post next week to share the experience.
If you ask me, this little message is the start of an MS FUD-spreading campaign. Someone - i.e. you, has tried to get a mention of "when" (should be "if") the GPL gets overturned, on every story in slashdot for the past day. This is an ancient topic, already beaten out through innumerable "heated discussions". Eventually, it's always found the GPL is legally binding. You are probably a newly assigned fudspreader, and don't know this yet. It's a good job anonymous coward posts are generally ignored anyway. What's the weather like in Redmond?
Believe me, I + my highly paid lawyer friends know that the GPL is legally sound. Far more so than MS's crazy EULAs, which are full of crap. Sorry to disappoint you. Several multi-million dollar companies have settled out of court rather than challenge the GPL. Presumably they had very good/expensive lawyers advising them at the time. Plus, any attempt to break the GPL would be suicidally bad PR.
MS hasn't needed to challenge the GPL, since the BSD licensed OSes give it all the code it needs anyway.
Nice try, but no cookie. GNU and Linux people move on, nothing to see here, just a dying fudster troll.
I do not equate exclusive GUIS with ease of use. The problem is that sometimes a CLI is easier than a GUI and sometimes it not. The act of clicking to copy a file betwean drives in a GUI is just as hard to teach if not harder than the old COPY from dos. The requirments are nearly Identicle, you must understand drive layouts, you must be able to select the files and you must specify the destination. This gets worse if you are talking multiple files in multiple directories. The CLI in this case is the fastest, easiest, best way.
X is a perfect GUI, KDE, GNOME, et all. It gives you easy access to both CLI and Drag and Drop.
I beleive that there is alot of underestimating going on here, that 8 year old you mentioned would probably be more comfortable in CLI than you can imagine. Computers are nothing new to our youth, and I really think the lake brainless clicking is what is making Linux the IN OS amoung so many young enthusists, and I beleive these to be the new norm.
I guess I should have just said, MODERATION is the key to all things, To much GUI is far worse than no GUI, just as to much CLI is far worse than no CLI. Get the picture?
..who are you (and/or the collective Linux community) to be telling me which O/S I should use? I don't *care* that Linux would not be controlled by one company -- ever hear of "tyranny of the majority"?
/.-ers dump on every other O/S that gets mentioned -- BeOS? Who needs it? MacOS X? Who needs it? FreeBSD? Who needs it? -- makes me less confident that my or any other computing minority's needs would be respected in the Great Utopian Linux Revolution.
Frankly, the fact that so many
We sacrfice lots of economic efficiency in our everyday lives in order to ensure our collective liberty. Why do we even have different brands of water? Milk? Why do we need FedEx, UPS, and DHL, when we already have a fairly efficient Postal Service? Because choice and comptetition is never bad. And power, even in the hands of such a dispersed and varied organism as the Linux community, corrupts. To think that we are exempt from the same impulses and limitations that plague every human group is the height of hubris.
No thanks. Give me good honest occasionally-government-regulated competition. Using Linux should be a *choice*. Among many.
What have you personally invented that is better at what it does than token ring?
IBM has had plenty of time to learn that closed technology invariably loses to open technology. Which is why the world is now using ethernet instead of token ring and PCI instead of MCA.
"Don't try that one on all the thousands of people who bought clones in the 80's and early 90's. They bought PCs because it didn't say IBM on the box"
The clones took over the world later in the 80's (starting with Compaq). IBM was indeed king of the PC world in the very beginning, and their name recognition did help them a lot.
Oh, and I doubt they necessarily bought them because they DIDN'T say eye-bee-emm on the box, they probably bought them because they were cheaper, or more portable (the first Compaq, again), or had more features/bundled stuff, etc. And, since Microsoft wasn't exactly loyal and the hardware was functionally the same, it was easy enough to get MS-DOS on the clones.
It was called the Infomagic Workgroup Server, now discontinued. It was GREAT.
It was the typical Linux distro, brain dead as far as security goes, but the set up interface was highly clueful. Last release uses the 2.0 kernel
There is a problem. Something like this must target DOS users (30 MM of them), but the MSDOS Client for TCP/IP is now difficult to find on the MS website. Of course, anything is hard to find on that website. It's probably still on NT disks.
All aspiring software marketers should try to track down a copy. The people who put it together understood the end user.
It didn't have diald, but that may have been an availability issue.
In terms of technical merits, BeOS may have some strength compared to existing Linux. But Linux is open. Anyone doing OS research can experiment with Linux. Once their algorithm proves useful, Linux is more likely to be the first OS that gets the implementation. So in the long run, Linux may gain some competitive strength against other OS.
What I mean is to stand a chance of beating M$ on the desktop, it is best that the OS, the most vital part, to be open and free. As for apps on Linux, all possible types should be welcome, whether it is OSS, freeware, shareware or commercial apps.
As for the Qt thing, at least we've a choice here. Personally I'm chosing Gtk+ and shunning Qt because of the Qt tax.
Token Ring is no more closed, proprietary technology than ethernet. Ethernet is more popular because it is cheaper, not because of _anything_ else. TR is much more robust, and for any given "speed" capable of carrying much greater traffic. Most who rattle on about crappy TR haven't got a clue how it works.
MCA was a mistake. It should have been opened up, then we would have had true plug and play years ago, and decent performance, without having to go through all that EISA/VESA/early PCI shit
What's good about competition is that it keeps everyone honest. I don't want any company or entity to dominate the O/S market -- and that includes Linux (sorry guys, I don't trust you either. It's nothing personal. The French Revolution started off as a popular uprising, then next thing you know it's guillotines and Napoleon.). I want everyone taking a good shot at dominating the market, but no one achieving it.
I have trouble taking OSOpinion too seriously when in the upper-left-hand corner of the page it says hosting is "gratuitiously" provided by so-and-so. Evidently they don't know what "gratuitous" means _or_ how to spell it. Plus, their habit of making links dark purple is highly annoying - it makes them look like you've already visited all of them. (There's a perfectly good convention for links; why do people feel compelled to break it for no particular reason?)
:-)
I did like the fact that the author comes out and states his (potential) biases, though.
Moderators, please feel free to mark this comment down.
I work at the big blue company in research. Some here don't like microsoft as evidenced by cartoons, quotes and other such things stuck to doors. They make us use it.
Micorsoft isn't liked at other companies though.
If you've been following the anti-trust trial, Microsoft really stuck it to IBM. Of course IBM doesn't want to be totally dependent on 1 vendor for anything, especially when you have a hostile relationship with that vendor. It makes good business sense.
IBM loses money on PC hardware. There are rumors of them droping out and just suppling parts (Dell and Acer and Apple have signed on). The new power books are almost more IBM than apple (Ram, screen, harddrives).
also big companies have to avoid competing with their clients.
Would you rather write a word processor for a company that makes the OS and a wordprocessor or one that just makes an OS? Which company would give you more support?
IBM makes more and more $ on consulting and support. They really can impliment solutions well and so having them impliment and support linux is a BIG win for linux and IBM. IBM gets a stable OS to impliment, Linux gets tested / legitimized by many IBM projects.
just my 2 cents..
/A
If the GPL is overturned in court standard copyright applies and whomever has the most successful closed version of a Linux-derived OS will be violating copyright law and will have to pull it from the shelves.
Posted by Phantom of the Operating Syste:
Linux started starved for apps, then GNU tools came along. The GNU tools compile under Be without a hitch. You are greeted with BASH as a terminal, for goodness sake.
What Be offers is multiprocesing support for your programs without you having to write special code to take advantage of this. Sounds like a developer's dream to me.
-phantom.
Apple is primarily a hardware company. Hence, they've been quite supportive of Linux on Mac hardware because it sells Mac boxes to people who want good hardware and don't care about certain x86-only Linux features. (Namely, apps only ported to x86 and gamers.) If LinPPC boxes ever got decent hardware and games, I'd buy one for my next box. Unfortunately, almost all Linux games are x86 only, and Apple's love affair with bottom-of-the-barrel chipset vendor ATI doesn't help.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I used to hate IBM with a passion back in the days when I had to deal mainframes. Now i've refocused all my bad vibes on M$ :) and kind of think of IBM as pretty cool. Look at the good things coming out of alphaworks, such a jikes. Now if they would just scrap AIX in favour of Linux, they would be great.
Who knows maybe in the future someone even more evil than microsoft will come along and I'll feel the same way about them.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
You seem to forget who gives these corporations the ability to wield such power over us and each other. The government. The government allows them to own patents and copyrights. The government allows them to incorporate and receive those advantages. The government keeps them from getting screwed over in other countries.
What does the government ask of them? Play by the rules that have been laid down. Pay the taxes that are required of you.
It doesn't matter what other companies are doing in the real world. You break the law and get caught, you are the one who will pay. It's like that for regular people as well as corporations. Sure, sometimes they get away with things. Happens all the time, and not just in business. It's not perfect and it's not always fair, but it's the best we have been able to do. Microsoft screwed up and got caught. It looks like they may end up paying the price now.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
There was a /. story a while back about this. Check out this story:
http://slashdot.org/articles/99 /01/10/1814250.shtml
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I was under the impression that the Windows emulation in OS/2 was pretty good. If IBM really wanted to hurt Microsoft wouldn't they port that to Linux or at least open source it and let the Wine folks do it? In my mind that's the single biggest thing they could do to speed up the obsoletion of Windows. So, I would question then whether they are driven to hurt Microsoft or whether that is just a nice fringe benefit of their actions.
Then again, maybe they can't port their emulator because of legal restrictions.
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Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
First up, this is my view on the *current* IBM. I hear they may have had a shady past (before me following things.. only 22 :P), but I am judging by current events....
;)
OK, so IBM is a global corporation, that is ultimately looking out for itself.
Similar to Microsoft, or Microsoft all over again you say?
There is a difference, IBM is going about things the RIGHT way. Whereas Microsoft uses marketing, pushing glitz over stability, the perpetual hardware upgrades, etc, IBM has been pushing open source and standards compliance.
If IBM pushing open source results in more open source, and more power to IBM, then so be it.
Ill be glad for them so long as they continue to do the "right thing".
Maybe the company has even learned something this time around with regards to what customers really want/need.
A saying that Microsoft seems to not understand, "Don't shit in your own backyard" springs to mind
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
unfortunately, Larry Ellison would probably kick all three of their asses without breaking a sweat. I hear he's a mean Karate killer.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
IBM and so do you.
And one of IBM's stinkier turds is Broken Ring.
If you want more of that (the list goes on, need I reiterate?), keep cheering for IBM.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
--
So far, IBM's involvement with open source seems to be balanced and well considered. They wanted to make money with an application server, not a web server, so they could build on top of apache. They wanted to push java, so they open-sourced jikes.
Of course, they also support open source to some degree by selling Netfinity servers with Linux. Instead of saying that they try to get back at Microsoft by doing something like this, I'd rather say that they seek independence and more control over the software they ship. This is weaker than the attitude the article describes.
-cjr
but if you can get it for free you might try it?
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Have you checked out the price of AIX 4.3 recently? Also, the newest version of OS390 is capable of running unix. Other than that I agree with you.
Vermifax
Logout
No CEO is going to place the future of his company into the hands of a bunch of long haired geeks who think that computers are 'kewl'.
I started with nothing and I still have most of it.
Who'd have thought in 1985 that IBM would eventually be supporting open standards and a level playing field? How times change!
Anyway, IBM's desire to take the desktop away from Microsoft is more than just "an axe to grind." IBM knows, just as well as Sun and HP do, that unless Microsoft's desktop monopoly is dislodged, Microsoft will use its modus operandi of "force everything to be integrated" to dominate the server universe as well. That, in turn, destroys the market for AS/400's, RS/6000's, and perhaps even 390's.
Even in the face of the current DOJ actions, Microsoft is still moving forward to tie things together with even more proprietary glue. Have you checked out Office 2000's server-side extensions? They run on Windows NT servers, of course, and use an MS wire protocol. Suddenly it seems that they were, in fact, listening to Vinod Valoppalil when he suggested the course of de-commoditizing the wire protocols.
Microsoft has proven that you can't concede anything to them, they won't just stay in one place and let you have a different sector of the industry. IBM and others must dislodge the Microsoft desktop monopoly in order to prevent Microsoft from eventually taking over the entire game.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
IBM's assault on Micro$oft is not just limited to supporting Linux. IBM is testifying against M$ on the DOJ trial. Methinks M$ is in Deep Shit...
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
"the marketplace" is not the catch-all philosophy on life, which undermines your entire line of argument. If I accept your assertion that government officials and academics don't "get" commercialism, it's because they _shouldn't_ get it. Most modern peoplein this country, when confronted, will say that business is just one of many things that must be balanced to produce a "better" world.
yeah like we're going to see gamers and home users switching to Solaris. Linux will peak but it will never scratch the surface of PC users who don't want to deal with /usr/bin/etc nonsense
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BeOS has an integrated GUI (which linux will never have) and also bash. In fact you can drag icons into the terminal and get the entire path name
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Many shareware/small software developers don't feel this way. Linux is either getting free stuff or expensive stuff from the big guys like IBM. What about the little guys like Opera? ok Trolltech is probably being nice to them but to other small developers, the QT fees are big bucks. And will linux users even support them? That remains to be seen... In order to have a healthy OS that's not a fad you need free software. You need commercial shrinkwrapped software. You need high-end stuff. But you also need shareware-it's all about supporting the little guys trying to make a few bucks
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I am happy to see that big blue is coming back, and doing it in style too. If you ever pick up a discover magazine you'll generally note what the ibm labs are working on, and if you stack all the things they've been creating together, you start to see an interesting future where they will deff. play a large role.
-Malachi-
"Life is all about strategy, mathematics and psychological perceptiveness."
the only operating system ibm gets any money from now is what runs on their mainframes. and nobody else's software has been ported to as/400 and all the rest of ibm's mainframes. and regardless of what anyone says, ibm does have a vested interest in seeing microsoft go down. hard.
nobody has any doubt about the kind of ethics bill gates has exhibited in the business world. they screw all their partners. they try to humiliate and grind their potential rivals into dust. and they expand into everything they can.
as for ibm itself being evil, i think the company has probably learned from its mistakes. when they hired gerstner people were talking about how ibm was going to go bankrupt. do you remember all those news stories, talking about how the big corporations/blue chips were doomed, big spreads comparing ibm to the dinosaurs, etc.
gerstner turned the whole thing around by razing the rigid corporate culture to the ground and forcing everyone to adapt. it will be a while before ibm is ever that arrogant again. basic corporate cycle:
1. small company, starts up, everyone works hard
2. small company kicks ass, people do well
3. small company becomes big company
4. management gets arrogant, employees complacent
5. crisis- company adapts or dies.
ibm made the jump, but only because of gerstner, and his willingness to question everything (because if you look at his background youll discover that he has NO TECHNICAL BACKGROUND prior to ibm!!!) gerstner was at rjr nabisco before ibm hired him...he knew NOTHING about computers... so he asked lots of questions and brought in some common sense and plenty of humility.
microsoft has yet to learn that particular lesson. but now it looks like the doj and ibm (and sun, and everyone else) are going to learn 'em some manners. how well microsoft does in the educational process is ultimately a test of the quality of their managers...
unc_
of all the things that will be said at the next IBeM board meeting, this won't be one of them.
"So, I figure it's kind of a karma thing for IBM to step up to the plate and help knock down this monster that is largely their own creation."
Have you seen Ironstayn vs Supergovernment yet?
>Linux can be used as more of a tactical approach >for accounts that want something that isn't IBM >hardware and also isn't necessarily from >Microsoft.
Sure, but they are doing something that Microsoft doesn't: they are looking at what is apprently a tide of real innovation and moving towards it, not to crush it but to use it. We all know that they don't need OS/2, for instance, to make payroll every week - hell, they make cash registers, for god's sake (or did, anyway).
The point is, they are doing something that is beyond MS- playing the game by someone elses rules, that is to say the rules of the OSS community.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
That's good for openware in general, for the time being.
But the future is still uncertain. All forces have turned against Microsoft and its fall from dominance seems only a matter of time. Only time will tell what will emerge from the resulting chaos.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
That's a mistake. People use Windows because of the amount of programs written for it, not because it has a pretty interface.
When app Foo appears for Linux and people need to use it, you can be sure that they'll learn enough Linux to get by very quickly - the same way they learned how to use enough Windows to get by very quickly.
Because despite Microsoft's propaganda to the contrary, Windows is not trivial to learn for the average guy on the street. For them, learning to double-click on the Netscape icon versus typing "netscape" at a % prompt takes the same amount of effort to learn.
It's the apps that matter for the users.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
So, I figure it's kind of a karma thing for IBM to step up to the plate and help knock down this monster that is largely their own creation.
IBM has already spent a good deal of money trying to get on top of the PC industry, and all of the efforts have pretty much failed (MCA, OS/2, PowerPersonal). Do you really think that IBM is going to take that on again?
Outside of certain shops, IBM does not have alot of credibilty in the desktop space. Just look around your office. The only place that IBM has significant desktop market share is Lotus Notes and ccMail, the latter being a dead product.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Which doesn't mean they'll do it. If you called up IBM today and said "I want a solution for X, Y, and Z - here's some money, I don't care how you do it."
You would come in the next day and probably find an AS/400 running Lotus Domino and DB2. Expecting a Netfinity running Linux? Sorry!
Linux can be used as more of a tactical approach for accounts that want something that isn't IBM hardware and also isn't necessarily from Microsoft.
(One thing someone should do is a Linux "Small Business Server" like MS and Novell produce. Basically it's a mail server, web server, fax server, firewall, and PPP server all wrapped up and pre-configured with a web admin interface. Basically something that vendors can drop on a small business and then forget about it.)
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
One thing that's become clear over time is that PC operating systems and applications isn't a very profitable business. Sure Microsoft has made a ton of money, but everyone else (Corel, Adobe, Borland, Apple, etc) seems to be just scraping along. If you include MCA and OS/2, IBM probably has a net loss for it's microcomputer endevors, and probably just stays in the business so that they can provide an end-to-end solution.
Instead, IBM (and Oracle, Sun, etc) have realized that the money is really in the middleware and back-end layers, as well as services. Which is why DB2, Lotus Domino, and Tivoli are much more important (and profitable) than ViaVoice or SmartSuite or OS/2 or anything else IBM could possibly dream up in the desktop space. Microsoft of course has figured this out too, and is trying to scale up Windows and MS SQL as fast as it can.
What does this have to do with Linux? I doubt IBM really cares about Linux on the desktop (including MWave drivers, KDE, Gnome, Mesa, etc.). Linux gives IBM a way to push cheap application servers and services while avoiding it's reputation for pushing proprietary products and also the dismal future of becoming a second-tier Microsoft solution provider.
So while IBM might push Linux a bit, it's ultimately just another solution for them to choose from. They certainly aren't going to get into another desktop OS war or try to evangalize any die-hard MS customers.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
This was mentioned in a leaf, but I thought it was important enough to put at the top.
In my very limited opinion, the workplace shell was absolutely the best desktop environment ever. I think you could teach people what object-oriented really means by having them work and develop under the WPS. It took me quite a while to move from Win3.1 practices to using WPS, but once I did, it was intuitive to the point of overkill. When Win95 came out, I giggled at what a half-ass, underdesigned effort it was compared to WPS.
I've never seen a box, but I was under the impression that AIX runs some sort of workplace shell on top of X. I've been hoping that they would open source this code and maybe we could have a truly OO desktop environment to work with.
Toss all the work with CORBA and distributed computing, and we'd have an even more incredible working environment.
A single dominent operating system or a single *anything* will stifle creativity and limit advancement. It's not just about openness. It's about understanding that there is more than one way to attack a problem.
Just like the old saw: "If all you have is a hammer, than every problems looks like a nail". If all we have is Linux than only Linux solutions will be considdered. Linux may be the wrong tool!
Worse, the Linux solution may be impractical even though the problem is quite feasible to solve.
I don't want a generation of programmers to grow up with only one example of an operating system. It's bad enough that today few see beyond Windows, Unix, and Macintosh.
What do you mean "bad" ?? For God's sake it is corporation which solely goal is to make money for it's memebers. Simple as that. The only way this company can be "bad" is when it does not bring profits or breaks the law. Anything else is simply business game.
I couldn't agree more with you. Of course, many people (DOJ attorney David Boies is one of them) believe that Microsoft's actions are breaking the law. So either way they're bad.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I would love to see IBM get back at microsoft and I would love to see an IBM GPL'd version of linux.
I think the more variants of linux the better, especially from a hardware manufacturer. As long as _ALL_ code was freely available it would be great.
-- I want to see a linux TV commercial. Just a penguin beating a bill gates look a like to death with a hockey stick would be fine.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
The way I see it, IBM has a duty to help knock down Microsoft. After all, Microsoft's success in the PC market is largely due to IBM not taking the market seriously. While M$ apologists like to pretend the B.G. is the greatest businessman ever, his current success is due largely to IBM.
Specifically, I see them making two moves which helped M$. One, they licensed MS-DOS from M$ instead of just buying it outright. IBM certainly had the upper hand in the negotiations, but I don't think they took the PC market seriously. Had they known how large the market was going to become, I am certain they would have bought an OS instead of renting one.
Second, M$ became a trusted name to business because the letters "IBM" were on the outside of the box. Nobody bought a PC because M$ wrote the OS. They bought them because IBM put their name on them.
So, I figure it's kind of a karma thing for IBM to step up to the plate and help knock down this monster that is largely their own creation. Of course, if M$ wasn't there, IBM would maybe be the dominant company in the PC business. I think, in hindsight, that we would have been better off. For one, IBM was getting hassled for anit-trust reasons long before M$ was. I think DOJ would have been willing to smack IBM down long ago. Second, PC's would probably be much more reliable. While you can fault IBM for lots of things, you have to admit that they take reliability very seriously.
Perhaps rather than "don't have a clue about how business is conducted" you really meant "are thoroughly disgusted about how business is conducted". I still don't believe that even most business is conducted in the thoroughly immoral fashion that you appear to advocate, but I will acknowledge that some, even some major, companies are as morally bankrupt as you imply. I do not and will not work for them. Were I you, I would insist on being paid in advance for any services.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Make a better product, offer a better price, fine. Working at destroying your competition through strong-arm tactics is another. I remember one account I heard of Microsoft offering a library a sizable donation, so long as they erased all copies of Netscape from their computers. This is not a company trying to win by offering a better product or a better price.
wants to be the first monkey to touch the monolith
Say what you will about Lotus software...it's generally true...but I'd hardly say IBM hardware is poorly made...
Blar.
/* Insert "16-bit player" joke here */
How does that go?
Windows 95 is a 32-bit shell on top of a 16-bit extension of an 8-bit OS written for a 4-bit CPU* by a 2-bit company that doesn't like 1 bit of competition.
(*) Remember the Intel 4004? Or as one wag put it, inside every Pentium is an i4004 trying to get out.
-- Alastair
Let IBM look out for themselves. That's a Good Thing(tm). If they do anything to help Linux, and hurt M$, that too, is a good thing. Yes, IBM was bad in the past, but in light of what M$ has done, do you think anyone will do that again? I don't think they'll be able to. Esp. if the justice dept. is victorious against M$ in court.
"I have no respect for a man who can only spell a word one way." - Mark Twain
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
I see IBM's support of Open Source to be one example of a shift in the software industry from a "manufacturing" mindset to a "service" mindset. Instead of producing boxes of CD-ROMs, which are worthless in themselves (who doesn't have a CD-R drive these days), IBM creates software as part of a service business, which includes consulting, "e-business" solutions, as they call it, and various levels of technical support. In this business model, open source makes a lot of sense. The software itself is not for sale. It's only part of a larger service package. They can easily let everyone under the sun look at their source with no risk of losing anything. Yes, the source is copyrighted material, but in the same way as a technical manual is copyrighted material. Obfusicating source code makes about as much sense, in the IBM "e-business" model, as selling PCs without letting anyone see a manual or open the case.
No sig.
"Microsoft was just another bit player...."
"bit" player. heh.
/* Insert "16-bit player" joke here */
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
I went to the OpenLinux Tour yesterday in D.C. Caldera, IBM, and Oracle get together to talk to VARs about partnering with them. The gist of why they are partnering? No, not to bring down M$ (although, to play to the crowd they did throw some jabs into their commentary). It has to do with numbers from an IDC study showing linux has 17% market share of _all_ the network OSs. This plus the fact that you can sell the same hardware running either Linux or NT. They get the VAR to sell their Netfinity solution (in the case of IBM) so IBM can get into the market early. Why should the VARs do it? They can make a higher MARGIN on profits because they aren't buying an OS and adding their markup to it. Remember the VARs have their 30-50% markup on _everything_ they sell. So if there is one less piece they pay for (the OS) they can sell a system for the same price and have higher profit OR they can sell a system for lower price and the same profit but undercut their competitors.
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
IBM is a commericial, for-profit company, but is that so bad? Yes, IBM will have it's own interests at heart. However, every company has it's own interests at heart whenever it forms partnerships with other for-profit companies as well, and yet, it's possible for them to both away better off than how they started. Just becuase something is open-source does not mean it's any less true.
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
You ever try to sell something to the government?
If you got a good computer by last year's standards at last year's market price, I'd say that IBM did a pretty fair job. Somebody has to pay for the mating dance vendors do with the procurement folks. Sure, its lucrative, but there is the risk you can pour man years down the government rathole and have nothing to show for it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I used a copy of Compaq OS/2 ver 1.0, on an ISA machine.
Funny, the aurthor of that article said that he uses Windows at work and Linux at home:) but he's probably a techie.
I want to get BeOS, but I want to run professional MIDI/Audio Apps and these are only in the development stages. After they come out, I'll be first in line to get it and replace my Mac.
(It still doesn't boot as fast as a C64;)
IBM is buying Whistle, the makers of the Interjet, which is a FreeBSD-based small-office internet box like the Cobalt Qube.
So it looks like IBM will be supporting two open operating systems, indirectly at least.
I see a movie parody: Imagine the role of Obi wan Kenobi to be played by IBM, Darth Vader to be played by Microsoft and Luke Skywalker to be played by Linux.
IBM brings Microsoft under its wings to join forces to battle the new threat to the empire: Apple and Commodore.
Microsoft is lured into the dark side of the source:
IBM loses the battle for the empire and Microsoft emerges as the new emperor. IBM leaves to the barren wasteland of OS/2.
A NEW HERO arrives on the scene to do battle for world dominion against the evil empire: Linux.
IBM sees the potential in this new hero and pulls out its trusty lightsaber/(cooperates with DOJ) and comes along side Linux to say: USE THE SOURCE.
The evil emperor is defeated and a new period of freedom and prosperity emerges from the command prompt.
Okay, it's a fantasy and has no bais in reality, but the Dark Side of Business is the temptation to establish a monoply.
The article, while pointing out that IBM's software take was in the range of 14% of total revenue, didn't mention that a huge percentage of IBM's software sales are in the licensing of software for 390 mainframes, AS/400's, RS/6000's, and SP2's. They have *very* little to lose in pulling the desktop and small server software rug from under Micros~1.
All I can say is "You go, IBMer's!"
Geeky modern art T-shirts
I don't think I would ever have expected the phrase "IBM is mainly a service company" to be used with a straight face by anyone, if you'd asked me in 1989.
This strikes me just as humorous as seeing a Micro$oft ad on TV that basically states, "You should use M$ products because we're the established brand." Same attitude as IBM back in the day. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
Sm@rtReseller got wind of such a strategy last year.
Here's a link to the article that outlines IBM's desire to support Netscape and Java against MS and basically declare war on MS at the desktop. FASCINATING read. I highly recommend it.
Excerpt: "What does all that mean? In a nutshell, the paper says IBM is striving to keep corporate desktops open by teaming with Netscape Communications Corp. to position Java applications
against Microsoft's COM/DCOM object model, "which locks customers into Windows on both the client and the server."
IBM hopes to ensure that 50 percent of PCs in 2003 are capable of running 100% Pure Java applications. "We will accomplish this by helping Netscape remain a major player on the desktop and
ensuring the 100% Pure Java applications will run in Microsoft's Internet Explorer," the document says.
So far, much of the strategy in this whitepaper (which is from July '98) has been blown away by market movements - Antitrust trial, breakup of Netscape, Java squabbles, etc. - but it does indicate that IBM is committed to not allowing MS to rule the world.
That's gotta be a good thing.
share and enjoy
I work for a certain Gov't Department, and we currently have orders in with IBM for computers. I don't know which is worse: IBMs shoddy software and hardware that we get shipped, or the fact that due to the government's wise bargaining, we get machines that would be above-average quality last year, and we still have to pay last year's prices for them. So in our institution, our database software is Lotus Approach, our presentation software is Freelance, our word processing software ... etc.
While I loathe to say it, I would almost rather use PowerPoint or some such, if only because all the other government folks we work with use them.
Sam Jooky
Don't try that one on all the thousands of people who bought clones in the 80's and early 90's. They bought PCs because it didn't say IBM on the box.
He's not talking about the late 80's/early 90's. Nobody would have bought those clones if IBM hadn't created the PC platform and Microsoft wouldn't be the most influential software maker in the world if IBM hadn't chosen their OS. The PC platform became popular because of IBM, regardless of how many people came to loathe them later on.
That's it. I think it's time to toss Bill, Steve and Linus into a ring...(I realize there are others we could throw in as well, but we'll keep things simple here for the sake of argument.) Whoever comes out standing takes control of the x86 OS industry for 5 years...
;)
If I had to, I could put up with 5 years of MacOS if it meant I never had to beat my head against WinNT!
And 5 years of Linux would simply be bliss.
Not to mention how much fun it would be to see Mr. Jobs and Mr. Torvalds double-team Mr.Gates. I'd pay good money to see that!
Now, this solution may seem a touch barbaric, but I can't see how it's any worse than the infighting/back-stabbing that's been going on in the industry since the whole IBM/M$ OS/2 fiasco.
I know that I will be flamed for this statement, but Linux in its current form doesn't have what it takes to beat windows at its own game, the home market and especially among newbies. Linux is great for hackers, sysadmins and the like but it is too hard for the average family to use. The linux community will have to sell its soul to get the support it needs for this market. BeOS is much better for the home market because it is fast, stable, easy to use and takes no time to get used to. Be is very linux friendly and will not position BeOS to compete against linux unless Linux tries to move into the home and workstation markets, especially the multimedia market. I have used both Linux and BeOS and BeOS is far better for newbies than any OS on the market. Lack of hardware support for BeOS is largely a misnomer now as it supports tnt, 99% of all ati, neomagic and a few other graphic cards, pretty much all sound blaster cards, all new ensoniq cards, aureal cards, basically all non-usb/non-winmodems and a huge chunk of the scsi card market. It usually lacks support for very specialized stuff like wacom pads. Personally my only personal bone of contention with Linux is that it is so slow compared to BeOS. BeOS boots in about 6-8 seconds and when I had linux installed it took about 20 seconds to start the cli and about 10 seconds to start X/Enlightenment/GNOME. It took that long on a PII 450 with 128mb of ram.
---Got Coffee?---