IBM Promises $1B Investment In Linux Development 109
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.
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But it would be enough to get more IBM Exceptions put in the GPL 4.0
Linux is developed by corps not hobbyists (Score:2)
Linux is primarily developed by corporations or government entities, directly or through subsidies, and not the more romantic hobbyist developer contributing his/her personal time.
Re: Linux is developed by corps not hobbyists (Score:4, Interesting)
Time is significant. Linux was originally developed mainly by hobbyists. After awhile a few corporations started subsidizing development, first by donations of equipment, and later by actually hiring people to ensure that it would run on their hardware. The people they tended to hire were those who were already acknowledged as experienced and talented.
Currently there are still a few pure hobbyists, but most developers have commercial subsidy, or are employed by some corportion or other. (I'm including, e.g., Red Hat.) There are multiple reasons. One is that a greater proportion of currently developing programmers are less into systems work. Another is that the system has become significantly more complex. (Most of the low-hanging fruit has already been picked.) Etc.
OTOH, do note that new distros are still being created. But also note that they tend to be created by forking an existing popular distro. The system is currently too complex for one person, and probably for one team of people, to manage a complete general purpose distro, like Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, or Suse. Slackware seems to be a counter example to this claim, but I don't know it well enough to know that it actually is.
Also, to be accepted as a kernel developer, you need to have a track record. And that takes time and effort. There are still some specialized areas that a person can use to break in (keeping documentation current is probably still such a place), but it's a lot more difficult than it used to be, because there are so many people submitting patches. It's much easier to do that if you have someone already accepted to vouch for you, and also to lead you through the process. And, as stated, most of those are currently people paid to work on the system as their job.
So, yes, it has developed into a system largely developed by people employed by corporations. And many of them are, indeed, the same people who started out doing this as a hobby.
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List of Linux distros [wikipedia.org]
Looks like it breaks down by package manager as: Debian (ap
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Well, some, yes, but that is beside the point. I rather think they are doing it because there are likely to be more Linux sys. admins available than AIX. So, in that sense, some the money would be going to people who support Linux thus increasing the pool of Linux admins. Surely that is preferable, yes?
Damn (Score:2)
I just moved to FreeBSD.
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one BILLION... (Score:4, Informative)
To sell more power chips. Nothing to see here, please move along.
Re:one BILLION... (Score:4, Interesting)
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I've had the feeling that's been in the cards for a decade now. Migration would take a long time, but IBM is a long-view kind of company.
VMs (Score:3)
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No need to do that, they can just run Linux and AIX in separate LPARs if so desired.
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As ESR said in his opus The Cathedral and the Bizarre, Linux is only free if your time has no value. Clearly IBM's time, and chip business, has lots of value. A billion dollar's worth apparently.
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As ESR said in his opus The Cathedral and the Bizarre, Linux is only free if your time has no value. Clearly IBM's time, and chip business, has lots of value. A billion dollar's worth apparently.
That's Bazar, not Bizarre. And the statement is true for just the narrow interpretation of "free", which is to say, "as in beer". ESR is a bit of a self important douche, by the way, but that's just my own take on the guy.
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Ouch, Muphry's law [wikipedia.org], I stand corrected.
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It's not the hardware, despite the ridiculous costs. It's for the 'MIPS' charges on their mainframes.
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I am shocked!
Alternative Investment Strategies (Score:1)
I think they should spend their time (and ultimately money) on more intelligent installations, documentation, and that abomination of a support website.
$1 Billion Towards THEIR OWN ARCHITECTURE. (Score:4, Interesting)
The phrase '$1 Billion' gets people to sit up and notice.
But most of this work won't benefit the Linux community and software at large, at least directly. It will be ancillary improvements; where something gets re-written/improved/fixed due to issues on the POWER architecture that happen to benefit everyone else too. Hopefully these are many and useful.
Still, any investment shows that Linux is Serious Business.
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The phrase '$1 Billion' gets people to sit up and notice.
But most of this work won't benefit the Linux community and software at large, at least directly. It will be ancillary improvements; where something gets re-written/improved/fixed due to issues on the POWER architecture that happen to benefit everyone else too.
This is work that ensures there are usable alternatives to Intel based equipment. I would have thought that benefits the Linux community at large directly ... unless one is most at home in a x86-64 monoculture :-)
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Everyone in open source land contributes (whether the voluntary time or money sort) to the bits that matter to them. There aren't many voluntary devs out there working on software that they don't really use.
IBM spending $1b on Linux development is great news. The fact that it'll be spent on those aspects of Linux development that matter most to IBM is hardly a shocker.
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Does it cost them anything? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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As a developer at IBM for 10+ years, doing Linux and PowerPC for a large portion of that time. I am wondering why I am laid off and working for HP now. One hand does not know what the other is doing it seems.
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The main skillset of the CEO's at IBM since Akers has been politics.
Its no wonder that the press releases always say one thing, while the guys on the ground see something different.
The way I read the release is that IBM is going to hire people in France to support linux, while laying off people in the US doing AIX and Linux work.
The $1B is just the amount of money they were going to be spending on support anyway.
US gov't policy responsible ? (Score:3)
The way I read the release is that IBM is going to hire people in France to support linux, while laying off people in the US doing AIX and Linux work.
There is also the gov't policy angle. The US gov't wants to tax foreign profits. So companies like Apple and IBM have a lot of money overseas that they don't know what to do with. Spending what they earn overseas in an overseas development effort avoids these additional taxes.
The US gov't basically seems to be encouraging IBM to shut down US development and move it overseas. Sure its an unintended consequence but many gov't failings stem from the unintended consequences of good intentioned policy.
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Wow, that sucks!
But honestly, if IBM made Linux the native OS of POWER, replacing AIX, it would be a shot in the arm for Linux. Particularly if at some point, they reintroduce Power workstations, running Linux. Just like in the 80s & 90s, where the OS was tweaked and tied to the hardware for Unixstations, it would be the same thing here, even if IBM were to open up the device drivers. In such a case, one would have Linux running right out of the box, unlike on x64s, where it has to be tweaked befor
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In case you haven't noticed, the marketplace for 'workstations' has changed drastically since the 90's. The hardware is now a cheap commodity, and for most uses, the software is irrelevant - i.e. all you need is a web browser, and possibly an office suite. All of which can be provided by either Windows or Linux on cheap HP or Asus hardware.
Sure, there's still a small market for movie effects production and publication-grade desktop graphics. But hardly one worth introducing a whole new hardware line to t
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Hardware is cheap specifically because it stopped being from IBM in the 80's.
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Re:Does it cost them anything? (Score:4, Interesting)
As a developer at IBM for 10+ years, doing Linux and PowerPC for a large portion of that time. I am wondering why I am laid off and working for HP now. One hand does not know what the other is doing it seems.
My experience at IBM was that often, not only does one hand not wash the other, but one hand is actively arm-wrestling the other. You can bet that the AIX group is plotting the overthrow of this upstart Linux thing, and the AS/400 group is plotting the demise of this microcomputer flash-in-the-pan thing, and the Z-series group is plotting the comeback of 3179's on the desktop.
Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Already invested 1 Billion (Score:1)
osFree (Score:2)
Actually, there is an FOSS OS that harks back to OS/2 called osFree. Essentially, it's the L4 microkernel, on top of which sits the relevant 'personalities' that are to be supported, be it Presentation Manager or even win 32 or win16. If that project can get to the point where the Presentation Manager personality is binary compatible w/ OS/2 on x86, and source compatible w/ OS/2 on Power, it would be a great achievement.
If any of the other companies make Power based microprocessors, then someone could p
itword vs WSJ (Score:5, Informative)
The people at itworld are less IBM literate than the WSJ, because they keep repeating "POWER mainframe".
Repeat after me, POWER is _NOT_ IBM's mainframe line. The mainframe line is the zSeries and runs on proprietary processors clocked at 5.5Ghz. POWER processors are in the pSeries and iSeries machines.
Now, that said, in many ways the high end pSeries stuff is better than the mainframe hardware, but in no way is it considered "mainframe" grade to the IBM sales guys.
All that said, RHEL and SLES both run on pSeries and zSeries machines.
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No, you're confused.
pSeries and iSeries are the same architecture (and you can run iOS and AIX workloads on the same machine in LPAR/DLPAR).
zSeries is a totally different architecture, they have talks at Hotchips most years talking about architectural improvements they make to zC and POWER, why would they have separate talks if they were the same architecture?
Also they have POWER Application offload servers as part of their mainframe offerings, those wouldn't be necessary if z was POWER.
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From SCO's original lawsuit:
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94. Over time, IBM made a very substantial financing commitment to improperly put SCO’s confidential and proprietary information into Linux, the free operating system. On or about May 21, 2001 IBM Vice President Richard Michos, stated in an interview to Independent Newspapers, New Zealand, inter alia:
“IBM will put US $1 billion this year into Linux, the free operating system.
IBM wants to be part of the commu
Linus (Score:5, Funny)
I hope part of that $1B will be used to buy Mr. Torvalds a license for a good backup program... ;)
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Why would he back up his data when he can just ftp it up to the internet, and let the whole world mirror it?
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Nah, I'd rather see a realtime interpreter for the boy.
Linus: You stupid motherfucking, shit-eating bastard, I vomit on your code!!
Translation Linus: You are misguided and I can help you fix your code to become a better person!!
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Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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If they use the remaining $99 million for advertising, it might actually work.
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bah (Score:1)
They're going to get in trouble with SCO! (Score:1)
Hahaha. Just had to say it.
Linux user for 15 years. One thing MS IDE is nice (Score:2)
Agreed. I've used Linux for fifteen years and very rarely use anything else on hardware I own. One of the few things MS does better is their IDE. Visual Studio is excellent. Their programming languages may be excrement, but the IDE is excellent.
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In fact the reason everyone loves .NET development is down to the IDE. I just had to write an admin tool in C#, and after a short time using it, it was clear the productivity gains from the IDE were huge
The language is a bit crappy all in all, but I wouldn't even consider it if it didn't have the autocomplete, intellisense, refactoring and codegen features, anyone without any knowledge of C# can write C# code using Visual Studio... which is not a huge endorsement, but it shows just how easy it is made to be
Re: Linux user for 15 years. One thing MS IDE is n (Score:1)
Those features and more are available in vim, if you care to learn how to use it and maybe install a plugin or two. I assume emacs can provide them as well. Linux also lets me have 10 code windows and a larger compiling window simultaneously visible on a dual 1920x1080 monitor setup.
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You're kidding, right. Real Programmers(tm) know that a properly configured Linux setup is one of the most powerful development environments on the planet.
EPIC FAIL, and on so many levels.
Re: IDE... (Score:1)
I can't count the times I had to ship Windows code to Linux in order to sort out an error in compiling. Also, bunch of vim windows is much more powerful than the MS IDE, not to mention all the command utilities and ease of scripting.
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Hot topic? (Score:1)
IBM has been r
What? (Score:2)
$1B for Linux on Power architecture? Are they just looking for a tax writeoff? Is it cheaper than updating AIX?
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Finally a Linux COBOL compiler? (Score:1)
Will any of that $1B finally get IBM to port their COBOL compiler to Linux? People have asked for it since the 1990s, and IBM has steadfastly ignored them. Their compiler works on AIX and OS/2, so it should be fairly easy to port. Now, a COBOL parsing front-end that integrated into LLVM would be a dream come true. How much would it cost to take their AIX code's front-end and port it to LLVM?
Sour grapes from the 1990s (Score:2)
Linux would be dead 15 years ago (Score:1)
Again? (Score:2)
Didn't they do that some years ago already? And having an ad campaign where they spray-painted sidewalks (and was fined for the "graffiti" [cnet.com]).
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Yep, back in 2000. IBM's been throwing money/support at Linux for years.
But it's not about Power at all! (Score:1)
It's about power consumption. These new Power8 chips may be clever but due to a shortfall of imagination and planning by Silicon Valley investors (and American corporations in general) in the latter part of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st... these things are pretty 'steampunk'.
Of every 100 chips coming off the assembly line, roughly 37 will be powered by coal, 30 from natural gas. There is no real future in this.
Only 7 chips will get their power from Hydroelectricity, a percent point we would
Good to see big companies behind the Linux kernel (Score:1)
Re:Who Cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Suckers (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Depends on the nature of the development in the ppc64 branch. If it's in the core instead of the arch/dir, then you gain from it.
Nothing already contributed can be taken away ... (Score:2)
As long as no one can just take their ball and go home BSD style ...
Wrong. With BSD you can go but you have to leave your ball, you are free to get a new ball and keep it to yourself though. Nothing already contributed can be taken away, you just stop contributing. The BSD community does not lose a single line of code.
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You're presuming that $1Bln put into FreeBSD work is going to EVER be contributed back. That's NOT a foregone conclusion, perpenso.
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You're presuming that $1Bln put into FreeBSD work is going to EVER be contributed back. That's NOT a foregone conclusion, perpenso.
Like Google's modifications to Linux that are not contributed back because they are only used internally, not shipped to others, and are considered a trade secret by Google?
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I have a power processor in my PS3, and I wish it were as powerful as my old 1.8GHz Pentium IV, but its not.
It's more powerful, easy, a 3.2GHz dual-threaded CPU with Altivec? Not even counting the SPE's. The main limitation of the PS3 running Linux, is the RAM, you'll hit the RAM bottleneck before you do anything that really taxes that CPU. That PS3 will be much faster than that Pentium IV at tasks like image scaling in the GIMP. I know...I've done it. And if you're one of those people who can use SPE code for science work... that PS3 would stomp that P-IV silly.
Same for the PS2 Linux kit, CPU and bandwidth