Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 17:31:56 -0600 From: Bob Willcox <bob@immure.com> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: Larry Sica <lomion@mac.com>, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FYI: SCO Group Slaps IBM with $1B Suit Message-ID: <20030310233156.GC40731@luke.immure.com> In-Reply-To: <3E6CBE25.4475121F@mindspring.com> References: <3093AC0A-51E7-11D7-A9E3-000393A335A2@mac.com> <3E6CBE25.4475121F@mindspring.com>
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As a 30-year veteran of IBM, I'll say that the (at least old) IBM culture had it's good points (job security being one of them). Also, in my experience, they seemed to take more interest in their employees than most companies. The thing they never did seem to do well, though was to integrate or deal with smaller companies that they acquired (I remember Rolm in particular). I must say that my final 12 years at IBM were spent working on AIX (from the RT in the early/mid '80s through release 4.1 for the RS/6K). During that period (particularly during the early years) the AIX programming center was very unconventional for IBM as a whole. We were promoting Unix (still a 4-letter word in most IBMer's vocabulary at the time) and it seemed that much of the rest of the company viewed us as the enemy. We were much less formal or controlled by corporate than most divisions within the company in those early days of AIX. I can't say how it is today, possibly quite changed. Bob On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 08:32:37AM -0800, Terry Lambert wrote: > Larry Sica wrote: > > But this comes down to > > a question, have the squid people tried to settle possible patent > > issues with IBM? > > Squid isn't considered a commercial caching product, and as long as > IBM doesn't ship it, they didn't seem to care. It's there, though. > > When IBM bought Whistle, we were well into developement on the > InterJet II product, which included Squid. One of the requirements > for them buying the company in the first place was Get Rid Of Squid. > > I don't think that IBM would enforce against Squid, per se, but it > would enforce against a company using it in a product, I think. The > PR issues with going after the Squid project itself are ugly. > > > > > I have a real love/hate relationship with IBM over tactics like > > > this: they are incredibly smart about some things, but incredibly > > > dumb about others. > > > > They are like most companies, but bigger. IBM overall, at least now, > > seems to be not so bad to deal with at least. > > You misinterpret my statement. I'm an ex-IBM employee; after they > bought the company I worked for, there was 60% attrition in the > first six months. I lasted a year and a half, but by that time, > there were very few of the original people still around. One or > two of them are still (more or less happily) with IBM today. The > standard numbers for companies acquired by Cisco are less than 6% > attrition after one year. A lot of it had to do with impedence > mismatch in corporate culture; they could have done a lot better, > I think. They are very smart about handling IP, and about their > customer facing systems. They are much less smart about internal > systems -- unit-to-unit, and employee-facing. Internal systems > costs for customer acquisition are incredible, and IGS still talks > about a 6 month order backlog, as if it's something to be proud of > having. Very weird company. 8-(. > > -- Terry > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message -- Bob Willcox We seem to have forgotten the simple truth that bob@vieo.com reason is never perfect. Only non-sense attains Austin, TX perfection. -- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967] To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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