On Wednesday 05 November 2003 08:38 am, Tom Brinkman wrote: <snip> > What's next, only time will tell. IBM has been a strong > Linux supporter for several years. To the tune that they put > about $75Mil into SuSE a year or so ago. Now that's been > acquired by Novell, also a strong Linux support group, an the > reason they split from SCO some time back. BUT, SuSE, IBM, and > Novell also have current an prior relationships and > agreements. IBM is ante'g up $50 million into these > Novell/Ximian/SuSE collaboration efforts. SuSE came out > smellin like a rose. I believe so did Novell. > > So I just view it as circlin the wagons in a more concerted > effort for OSS/GNU/Linux to take over the Net and enterprise. > Fsck M$ et al. The money involved is relatively peanuts anyhow > for Novell, not even pocket change for IBM. For an indicator, > http://news.netcraft.com/ notice that Apache's (on Un*x) gain, > mirrors M$ loss. BTW, IBM involvement is significant to me. > They're about 19 on the world's largest companies. For > perspective, Microsoft is somewhere in the 170's. BUT... > > So we're still here, just the 1 or 2% of the desktop users > runnin Linux. RedHat wants to go enterprise only. No surprise > they always considered regular users as a nuisance (which they > are) for a commercial distro. Realistically there's only two > major community sponsored choices left, Mandrake an Debian. I > ain't goin anywhere, but there's much less than 1 or 2% left. > What to do? .... </snip>
Well said, Tom. Personally I'm not afraid of IBM taking over Mandrake eventually. The reason is that IBM here in Denmark displays a very positive attitude toward linux. They even offer free courses in linux to developers and sysadmins, provide test-versions of their WebSphere etc., etc.... And, as long as they respect the GPL, I think they can push linux onto the desktop in a big way here. IBM is by far the biggest provider for the public administration in Denmark and cost-savvy politicians can't ignore Open Source Software any longer - especially with the almost weekly breakdown of their Windows-systems due to worms, Trojans and vira. And I think the HP people look better wearing red hats, whereas the button-down, blue suits at IBM look better wearing top hat & tails ;-). Kaj Haulrich. -- *This mail was sent from a 100 % Microsoft free computer*
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