All in all more good news for Linux.
About 2 weeks back I posted a article on what software IBM is giving away at
'no charge'. In these Internet years, the pace of change has changed.
Since then, the amt. of stuff coming out of IBM is quite amazing.
In my day job I have to interact with a lot of IBM s/w and now I can quote
on an analysis for a customer that showed, by ditching NT for Linux, they
save $6500 on s/w costs for a new project using IBM s/w. That is cost per
developer. They plan to have 12 developers initially and grow to 50.....
It has made the PHB's wake up and look seriously. It is not just IBM though.
Of the top of my head, I can name 10 big firms giving away commercial s/w
free on Linux (for development).
This is brilliant news for developers. If Linux can be established as a
stock standard development platform, then sooner or later, people will start
questioning why did they buy OS licenses for deploying these apps..
A typical use case : I had to produce a UML model from some Java Code. I
looked around and tried to use Rational Rose on NT to do it. It took me
about 35 minutes of fiddling around before I got an acceptable model.
I searched on the web and found a product called Jvision. It is free on
Linux for non-com use. It took me exactly 3 minutes to produce the same
model on my Linux m/c.
The cost : Rose was $15,000 a pop, Jvision was free and USD300 a pop for
commercial use. While we are not comparing apples with apples here, it just
illustrates that more and more s/w is flowing into the Linux field and it is
generally cheaper if not free.
I just can't stop grinning these days ;-)
-- Aravind
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Rick Welykochy
> Sent: Friday, 10 March 2000 12:29
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [SLUG] Feelgood from Big Blue
>
>
> 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."
> --
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