Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 05:00:05 -0500 (EST) From: "Brandon D. Valentine" <bandix@looksharp.net> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org>, Hiten Pandya <hitmaster2k@yahoo.com>, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>, FreeBSD Chat <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: IBM suing (was: RMS Suing was [SUGGESTION] - JFS for FreeBSD) Message-ID: <20011213044944.L56723-100000@turtle.looksharp.net> In-Reply-To: <3C186EA5.4EA87656@mindspring.com>
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On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Terry Lambert wrote: >My point is that IBM is backing Linux and the GPL purely for >marketing reasons, not legal or technical reasons. I've recently sat in on discussion with IBM Sales on their Beowulf cluster offerings and been enlightened as to their view on Linux and GPL'd software. The techs along with the sales team all seemed to agree that Linux as a scientific computing solution was inevitable and that the only way IBM was going to continue to make money in that market was to focus a significant amount of development resources on preparing value add for the Linux cluster market. Hence the deployment of their recent Top500 hits like Platinum, the 512 node dual Processor PIII cluster at NCSA, and the 1024 node single processor PIII cluster at Shell Oil. They realize that the utility and market for future IBM Power architecture SMP designs like the SP series machines is shrinking and that they must start providing Linux solutions that are better than the other guys'. They're currently doing this in the form of cluster management software and onboard service processors for computer and infrastructure nodes, as well as a partnership with Myricom to offer Mryinet 2000 hardware with all IBM cluster offerings. I was impressed by just how much the IBM global sales force /gets it/ in terms of high performance scientific computing. Their support of Linux solutions, at least in this market space, was not driven by IBM marketing or IBM legal, but rather seems to have been pushed by the techs and sold directly to the sales force. IBM provides custom, non-GPLd management software with all of their cluster offerings. This is completely independent of all work they are doing on the highly visible OSCAR cluster management project. They already have their own internally developed solution and all of their contributions to OSCAR are not compromising that value add. Brandon D. Valentine -- "Iam mens praetrepidans avet vagari." - G. Valerius Catullus, Carmina, XLVI To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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