Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 08:32:37 -0800 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Larry Sica <lomion@mac.com> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FYI: SCO Group Slaps IBM with $1B Suit Message-ID: <3E6CBE25.4475121F@mindspring.com> References: <3093AC0A-51E7-11D7-A9E3-000393A335A2@mac.com>
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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
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