Computer giants to open Linux lab
By PETER SVENSSON
The Associated Press
NEW YORK--The community of mostly volunteer programmers that has built
Linux into a formidable operating system is
getting some help from computer industry giants. (Oh, really!!!)
International Business Machines inc., Intel Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co.
and NEC Corp. are announcing today that they will
create a laboratory with an investment of several million dollars where
programmers can test Linux software on the large
computer systems that are common in the corporate world.
The lab is expected to open by the end of the year near Portland. (That's Oregon)
Linux is an “open source” operating system that anyone can modify, as
long as the modifications are made available for free on
the Internet. It has a devoted following among programmers, who
collaborate on software projects over the Web. These
software engineers can usually only test software on their own desktop
computers, part of the reason Linux is now rarely used
on larger computers. (What about PDA's, and Wireless Computing)
“The Open Source Development Lab will help fulfill a need that individual
Linux and open source developers often have: access
to high-end enterprise hardware,” said Brian Behlendorf, creator of
the open source Web server software Apache.
Irving Wladawsky-Berger, the head of IBM’s Linux group, said the lab
would help companies run hardware from different
vendors together, as well as run “clusters” of computers working as
one. (I seem to remember how Big Blue got snookered by
MicroStuffed; and where is MicroStumped in this venture.)
The four main sponsors said they will contribute several million to
the project. ($7,000,000 out of $100,000,000,000
WOW!!!)
The lab also is backed by smaller companies that specialize in Linux
products, such as Red Hat Inc., Turbolinux Inc., Linuxcare
Inc. and VA Linux Systems Inc., as well as Dell Computer Corp. and
Silicon Graphics Inc. (Time to steal it back)
From the Wednesday Register Guard Business Section
"Watson the game is afoot!"
