Nice input on a rainy day
-rickw
-----------------------------------------------
IBM throws weight behind Linux team
Fin Review 10/3/00
By Mandy Bryan
The massive swing towards a Linux-based operating system announced by IBM
last month has spawned a whole new development model for the company,
according to its Linux program director, Dr Daniel Frye.
Linux, as an open source operating system, can be downloaded free or bought
for a nominal sum from a distributor on condition that developments are
made available to the wider Linux community.
Because IBM decided that in order to mix and match from the Linux
community's finest, it would build a distributed team of developers, Dr
Frye oversees a team spanning file system experts in Austin, Texas, system
debuggers in India, and print developers in Boulder, Colorado.
"All they need is a phone and internet access," he said.
It is a team that is growing in line with a tenfold increase in IBM's
commitment to Linux this year. IBM last month announced top-to-bottom
support for the free software right across its hardware, software and
services businesses.
The decision was a "no brainer", according to Dr Frye, given that last
year, IBM saw its Linux-based sales grow 100 per cent and the same growth
was forecast for this year.
"It's enormous. We've never seen anything like it in terms of uptake," he
said. Moreover, Dr Frye believes Linux will drive and be driven by the next
generation of e-business.
"The internet grew because it was built on open standards. Linux is the
second wave of that," he said. Its open source development model meant
Linux was maturing faster than any other operating system in history and at
the same time was becoming more reliable, he said.
IBM is not the only vendor to put its weight behind the operating system.
Silicon Graphics has an ambitious Linux program and last month Dell
announced it would pre-install Red Hat Linux on two of its laptop computer
models.
But Dr Frye said IBM was yet to pre-install Linux on its laptops because it
considered the maturity of Linux on the desktop was between one and two
years behind that of Linux on the server.
IBM's Linux commitment, though, is still the largest by a technology vendor
to date, and is set to put Linux squarely on the enterprise computing map,
says IDC Australia's research director, Mr Graham Penn.
"If someone is going to move the goal post, it needs to be someone like
IBM. It moves Linux from being a curiosity into mainstream," Mr Penn said.
IDC has found that Linux now makes up nearly 16 per cent of worldwide
server sales and it predicts that shipments of systems pre-loaded with
Linux will grow 25 per cent through 2003, double other that of any other
operating system.
Even so, Linux would not take over the world, according to Dr Frye.
"Customers don't want a single technology, they want choice," he said.
"Linux is stable and well suited to a heterogeneous environment."
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux Users Group Mailing List - http://www.slug.org.au
To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
unsubscribe in the text
