Re: It's IBM dummy

From: Chuck Murcko (chuck@topsail.org)
Date: Fri May 04 2001 - 23:29:36 PDT


On Friday, May 4, 2001, at 01:53 AM, Eirikur Hallgrimsson wrote:

> On Friday 04 May 2001 00:56, Dave Winer wrote:
>> BTW, for those who don't have the liner notes, the Microsoft comments
>> about
>> open source are almost certainly about IBM's marketing of open source
>> programming against Microsoft's stuff in the .NET area.
>
> Making for a real FUD-for-all. Not just vaporware, but vapor economics
> on
> both sides.
>

I don't think this stuff is vaporware:

http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/

and I'm sure M$ has just the same...

> This really seems to be a marketing war to no immediate purpose. It's
> not as
> though either side has much of anything to sell, at the moment. It
> seems
> early in the race to be jockeying for position. I suppose that IBM can
> sell
> Linux/Apache/Samba servers against NT, but that's not exactly competing
> with
> .NET.
>

We're years into the prizefight on this one. You missed the first 7
rounds. 8^) Don't worry, it's a title fight. There are still 8 to go.

It's not about Linux/Apache/Samba anymore. That's just the plumbing and
wiring, not the house (or the issue); the issue is web services. Whose
products will the most people see?

You've got to remember ASF is a whole lot more than an HTTP server
project. It's a grouped collection of dozens of projects under the ASF
umbrella, many of which live in the Java and XML worlds. And the OS
world in general is lots broader than commodity software. That's what
ultimately scares M$.

IBM IHS is pretty much stock Apache-httpd plus a few modules. And there
are entire IBM and Sun packages also available from ASF because they
were open-source licensed. It works both ways.

> My personal emotional reaction was revulsion at Eric Raymond's portrayal
> today of the GPL and Stallman as unrepresentative of 'the Open Source
> movement.' I agree. Open Source has nothing to do with Stallman's
> idealism. It's sort of like a political party that wants to distance
> itself
> from the idealism that gave it it's initial cachet, and I think it
> deserves
> every bit of the credibility that that implies.
>

Feh. Why is it that everyone treats OS like it has none of the character
defects that corps have? Or any of the brains or pragmatism in a
business sense?

I think it's time to cancel that exemption, no? Level the ethical
playing field and see what we see. I think OS and corps are going to
reach a symbiotic relationship; it's the only one that works in a sense
corps understand, which is money. This isn't about IBM vs. M$, it's
really everyone else vs. M$ pretty soon now, as other corps use &
contribute OS.

This doesn't mean that there's no idealism going on, either. For either
OS or corps.

> I'd personally like to see Open Source get trounced by Microsoft.
> After all,
> once you have renounced idealism, what do you have left?

? The issue is analog here. It's not *just* idealism or what's left in
its absence.

> The FSF and the GPL
> can't be sucked-in that way. Yes, I have read the deadly dishing in
> http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/opinions/3297/1/ It's too, too,
> true.
> The GNOME situation is a mess. Having two companies entirely focused
> on it
> has produced more problems and less results than KDE's much less
> commercial
> model. I'd hate to see The Kompany spawn imitators and take KDE down
> this
> path. On the other hand, I'd like to be gainfully employed in the Free
> Software space. I seem to be 'eating my own dog food' lately, in the
> very
> low calorie flavor.
>
>

The FSF and the GPL are sucked into something else. Their own agenda,
maybe.

GNOME, sigh, what it could have been. Or could be still, maybe. Good
point.

Chuck Murcko
Topsail Group
http://www.topsail.org/



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