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.
<grammarnazi> It's "viruses", not "vira". "Vira" would be the plural of "virum", not "virus". "Virii" is also wrong (it would be the plural of "virius"). "Viri" would be possible, though I've never seen it in a dictionary.</grammarnazi>
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 ;-).
I think this will push Linux in two directions, both of which have their advantages. One is small, community distros like Debian. The other is projects supported by hardware companies (or other organisations such as universities and government bodies). We need both ends of the spectrum, I think. Hardware companies like IBM can be trusted to support the GPL simply because they are hardware companies - they make their money by selling actual _things_, and the software is only there to sell the machines. Look at how Star Office only released its source code after it was bought by Sun.
Sir Robin
-- "Certitude is possible for those who only own one encyclopedia." - Robert Anton Wilson
Robin Turner IDMYO Bilkent Univeritesi Ankara 06533 Turkey
www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
