Re: Article: "Linux and the Asian PDA markets"

On Sun, 2003-09-21 at 14:09, Grant Edwards wrote:
> IMO, IBM and Sun are working with Open-Source precisely
> _because_ they're afraid of it.  A much wiser long-term
> strategy than that of Microsoft.
> 
>   "Keep your friends close... and your enemies closer"
> 
> If you're afraid of drowning, learning to swim is probably a
> better strategy than ranting and raving about the evils of
> water.
There are worlds of difference between IBM's involvement in Open Source
and Sun's. Sun's involvement in Gnome development has mainly been driven
by the need to find a replacement for it's ageing CDE desktop on
Solaris. Historically they've wavered on Linux support, and are pushing
massively overpriced x86 architecture for use only in the low-end of an
Enterprise. Their MadHatter project has come and gone and come again.
IBM, on the other hand, sees Linux as eventually replacing AIX and has
put it the money to see it happen.