IBM Promises $1B Investment In Linux Development

itwbennett writes with a link to a story you'll need to mentally upgrade from "expected to" to "just happened" about IBM's $1 billion dollar investment in Linux officially announced Tuesday morning at LinuxCon (the WSJ broke the story yesterday), by IBM VP Brad McCredie. IBM, says the linked article, will use all that money "to promote Linux development as it tries to adapt Power mainframes and servers to handle cloud and big data applications in distributed computing environments. The investment will fund Linux application development programs for IBM's Power servers and also be used to expand a cloud service where developers can write and test applications for Power servers before deployment. It will also facilitate software development around IBM's new Power8 chips, which will go into servers next year." It's not the only time that IBM has recently tossed around the B-word, and as Nick Kolakowski notes at Slash BI, it's also not the first time IBM has put that much money into Linux.

Does it cost them anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if this is an accounting trick. Lay off all their developers, and then hire them back as contractors at a lower rate to sell Power8 systems.

Wow!

[LifesABeach]

Well, if you're in IBM-India, that's great!

Re:Suckers

[jedidiah]

As long as no one can just take their ball and go home BSD style, then EVERYONE benefits. That's equality.

The "bitch mentality" of sabotaging others is really not necessary or appropriate.