Re: Gina/Adityha, followup on donation request re OpenPower devices Re: Interest in POWER platform?

[Stuart Henderson]

On 2017-05-25, Mikael  wrote:
> This email followup was mostly to reflect that a member of the general
> public has asked for the support that a donation of OpenPower devices would
> lead to.
>
> Feel free to forward it to the person at your company who has the power to
> sign off on a donation e.g. your CEO.
>
> This is a pro bono email.
>
> I personally think Power9/Power8 support is a useful thing and if
> 10x2,850USD would have been less than say 0.2% of my wealth, I'd simply
> have taken this matter through a web shopping cart.
>
> Have a good day.
>
> Thanks!,
> Mikael More


I don't get this. You're asking a company to donate a bunch of machines
and expecting developers to do a bunch of work (and you don't even know that
anyone is interested). And you're putting in what exactly? Emails that might
sour possible future relationships if devs might sometime be interested in
requesting this later? I hope you made it clear that you're not involved
with the OpenBSD project yourself.

Re: Gina/Adityha, followup on donation request re OpenPower devices Re: Interest in POWER platform?

[Kevin Chadwick]

On Wed, 24 May 2017 23:30:33 -0700


> I can't tell, are you trolling these people?
> 
> Or, do you sincerely find these to be an effective set of techniques
> to convince other people of your beliefs?

IBM's revenues have been falling for a while so my guess is the only
hope being that you expect them to get future sales from this donation
to cover the hardware and paperwork cost, especially if it means going
to a boss. Or if the publicity was worth it. I doubt they will take a
gamble on the math, unfortunately??

Re: Gina/Adityha, followup on donation request re OpenPower devices Re: Interest in POWER platform?

[Chris Cappuccio]

Hi Mikael,

I can't tell, are you trolling these people?

Or, do you sincerely find these to be an effective set of techniques to 
convince other people of your beliefs?

This is a pro bono email.

Chris

Mikael [mikael.ml...@gmail.com] wrote:
> Hi IBM,
> 
> This email followup was mostly to reflect that a member of the general
> public has asked for the support that a donation of OpenPower devices would
> lead to.
> 
> Feel free to forward it to the person at your company who has the power to
> sign off on a donation e.g. your CEO.
> 
> This is a pro bono email.
> 
> I personally think Power9/Power8 support is a useful thing and if
> 10x2,850USD would have been less than say 0.2% of my wealth, I'd simply
> have taken this matter through a web shopping cart.
> 
> Have a good day.
> 
> Thanks!,
> Mikael More
> 
> 2017-05-25 13:52 GMT+08:00 Mikael :
> 
> > Hi Kai and IBM,
> >
> > Yes I did the attempts to contact IBM to get Power donations, as quoted by
> > axon below. A guy by the name Benjamin Herrenschmidt at IBM used the word
> > 'execrable' about me in PM, that was weird for a fund(hardware)raiser, and
> > sincerely quite disturbing to me.
> >
> > (My 'attitude' - after 8 months and 70 emails they delegated the matter
> > from their main office in the US, to Australia.)
> >
> > I think with respect to IBM donations, the relevant path would be to
> > enquire directly with their CEO Ginni Rommety, e.g.
> > https://www.ibm.com/ibm/ginni/ , also with reference to the massive
> > commercial value they have from OpenSSH. Anyone below does not have the
> > power to authorize donations.
> >
> > Gina and Adithya at IBM on copy for reference. If you can forward this to
> > your CEO would be great. Your cheapest multi-CPU Power9 or Power8 device
> > should be around 2000 USD production cost max, meaning this is a 20,000 USD
> > donation request, or for 20,000 / 80,000,000,000 = 0.000,025% of your
> > annual turnover, as a marketing and goodwill thing it couldn't be cheaper.
> >
> >
> > If you have 6 to 10 devices - just any, preferably multi-CPU - to donate,
> > please ship them over and we'll likely see support happen.
> >
> > If they need to be shopped, Tyan was selling them for 2850 USD a piece
> > recently, https://web.archive.org/web/20160118065359/http://
> > www.tyan.com/campaign/openpower/index.html . Maybe we're closer to Power9
> > now.
> >
> > I like Power as it's server-grade hardware that I personally deem
> > preferable to AMD64. IBM's attitude about my hardware-raiser initiative
> > last year was execrable though.
> >
> > This email is a response to suggest a next step. I think everyone involved
> > has been personally well-intended and there was a certain sense of friction
> > in the realization that noone involved in the emails at IBM had the
> > authority to sign off on a donation.
> >
> > People like you and me are free to shop and donate.
> >
> > Mikael
> >
> > 2017-05-25 1:57 GMT+08:00 Kai Wetlesen :
> >
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> What is the current community interest in getting OpenBSD running on the
> >> newer POWER processors? I have a number of POWER based systems at work
> >> which run various Linux flavors, but it would be nice to bring OpenBSD to
> >> these systems as we???re been trying it out in different spaces throughout
> >> our division. What would it take to get a POWER port up and kicking?
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >> Kai
> >>
> >
> > 2017-05-25 8:42 GMT+08:00 Ax0n :
> >
> >> In summary: There are 3 people who have been quite vocal about getting a
> >> POWER port recently. None of them are developers with the knowledge or
> >> resources to port it.
> >>
> >> Big thread from late last year:
> >> https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc=147680858507662=2
> >>
> >> A follow-up (late December 2016):
> >> https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc=148246956710299=2
> >>
> >> Search link with some scattered and often-unrelated results:
> >> https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc=2=1=IBM+POWER=b
> >>
> >
> > 2017-01-03 14:52 GMT+08:00 Benjamin Herrenschmidt :
> > ..
> >
> >> Right, and as I mentioned, we hope to have reasonably soon much more
> >> affordable machines available as well, which will make it easier for us
> >> to sponsor community projects with HW donations.
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Ben.
> >>
> >
> >

Gina/Adityha, followup on donation request re OpenPower devices Re: Interest in POWER platform?

[Mikael]

Hi IBM,

This email followup was mostly to reflect that a member of the general
public has asked for the support that a donation of OpenPower devices would
lead to.

Feel free to forward it to the person at your company who has the power to
sign off on a donation e.g. your CEO.

This is a pro bono email.

I personally think Power9/Power8 support is a useful thing and if
10x2,850USD would have been less than say 0.2% of my wealth, I'd simply
have taken this matter through a web shopping cart.

Have a good day.

Thanks!,
Mikael More

2017-05-25 13:52 GMT+08:00 Mikael :

> Hi Kai and IBM,
>
> Yes I did the attempts to contact IBM to get Power donations, as quoted by
> axon below. A guy by the name Benjamin Herrenschmidt at IBM used the word
> 'execrable' about me in PM, that was weird for a fund(hardware)raiser, and
> sincerely quite disturbing to me.
>
> (My 'attitude' - after 8 months and 70 emails they delegated the matter
> from their main office in the US, to Australia.)
>
> I think with respect to IBM donations, the relevant path would be to
> enquire directly with their CEO Ginni Rommety, e.g.
> https://www.ibm.com/ibm/ginni/ , also with reference to the massive
> commercial value they have from OpenSSH. Anyone below does not have the
> power to authorize donations.
>
> Gina and Adithya at IBM on copy for reference. If you can forward this to
> your CEO would be great. Your cheapest multi-CPU Power9 or Power8 device
> should be around 2000 USD production cost max, meaning this is a 20,000 USD
> donation request, or for 20,000 / 80,000,000,000 = 0.000,025% of your
> annual turnover, as a marketing and goodwill thing it couldn't be cheaper.
>
>
> If you have 6 to 10 devices - just any, preferably multi-CPU - to donate,
> please ship them over and we'll likely see support happen.
>
> If they need to be shopped, Tyan was selling them for 2850 USD a piece
> recently, https://web.archive.org/web/20160118065359/http://
> www.tyan.com/campaign/openpower/index.html . Maybe we're closer to Power9
> now.
>
> I like Power as it's server-grade hardware that I personally deem
> preferable to AMD64. IBM's attitude about my hardware-raiser initiative
> last year was execrable though.
>
> This email is a response to suggest a next step. I think everyone involved
> has been personally well-intended and there was a certain sense of friction
> in the realization that noone involved in the emails at IBM had the
> authority to sign off on a donation.
>
> People like you and me are free to shop and donate.
>
> Mikael
>
> 2017-05-25 1:57 GMT+08:00 Kai Wetlesen :
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> What is the current community interest in getting OpenBSD running on the
>> newer POWER processors? I have a number of POWER based systems at work
>> which run various Linux flavors, but it would be nice to bring OpenBSD to
>> these systems as we’re been trying it out in different spaces throughout
>> our division. What would it take to get a POWER port up and kicking?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Kai
>>
>
> 2017-05-25 8:42 GMT+08:00 Ax0n :
>
>> In summary: There are 3 people who have been quite vocal about getting a
>> POWER port recently. None of them are developers with the knowledge or
>> resources to port it.
>>
>> Big thread from late last year:
>> https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc=147680858507662=2
>>
>> A follow-up (late December 2016):
>> https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc=148246956710299=2
>>
>> Search link with some scattered and often-unrelated results:
>> https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc=2=1=IBM+POWER=b
>>
>
> 2017-01-03 14:52 GMT+08:00 Benjamin Herrenschmidt :
> ..
>
>> Right, and as I mentioned, we hope to have reasonably soon much more
>> affordable machines available as well, which will make it easier for us
>> to sponsor community projects with HW donations.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Ben.
>>
>
>