I'd like to second the idea that IBM would be better served by simply donating to the OpenBSD Foundation.
The pieces that benefit IBM the most are the open source software (OpenSSH, which ships on almost every single server they sell) that is the result of hard work by the OpenBSD developers. I'd appeal more to the 'social good' for the industry that OpenBSD is doing, rather than starting from the position that supporting OpenBSD will help them sell more servers, because I can't see that materializing. Alternately, I'd position it that OpenBSD on Power8 is another way of flushing out bugs in code that's used almost everywhere, and ensuring consistency and correctness and adherence to standards, in much the same way the aging VAX architecture was supported for the benefits of ensuring that the code base was universally correct. As a further alternative, IBM offers access to hardware on a free basis through their POWER Development Cloud where you got access to Power<X> system for the purposes of compiling, porting, developing, testing, or demo-ing. There may be a way to leverage that existing infrastructure in such a way that developers get access to the hardware (and KVM and Remote power switch) without IBM sending out expensive hardware, or developers paying the (substantial) costs for electricity/cooling. Good luck! > On Oct 18, 2016, at 12:35 PM, Mikael <mikael.ml...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi everyone, > > I asked IBM to donate 4-10 Power8 servers to the OpenBSD Foundation, for > adding support for this arch. After 6 months this got all the way to their > Director of the Power(8) Ecosystem & Alliances, that is the highest > executive for the whole arch. Just right now, she's asking for a motivation > for IBM to donate - she asks: > > > "It would be helpful to know where you are seeing requests for OpenBSD on > Power and what applications on top of OpenBSD are being requested. We have > not seen any requests as of yet from our target clients. " > > > Can you please collect answers to this question and post them here in this > thread, or PM them to me. I'll forward your responses and they'll decide > whether to donate Power8 devices to OpenBSD, based on them. > > ** Please tell the next 6-7 days! > > Thanks! > Mikael
