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IBM Linux Business

IBM Promotes Linux Partners to Highest Tier 80

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the getting-a-leg-up dept.
Anonymous Anonmenon writes "Big Blue was at it again today after it promoted the two leading commercial Linux distributions to the highest level tier of its Strategic Alliance Program. From the article: '[The Strategic Alliance Program] is designed to allow independent software vendors (ISV) work through one point of contact within IBM as opposed to navigating through several relationships with representatives from different divisions. The move was billed by executives from all companies as a means to make it simpler for clients to acquire open standards-based Linux hardware, software, and services through integrated sales, distribution and services channels.' The announcement was also heavy on the Java side, with both Red Hat and Novell pledging a 'reinforced commitment' to the Java developer community and J2EE."
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IBM Promotes Linux Partners to Highest Tier More

IBM Promotes Linux Partners to Highest Tier

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  • IBM only likes the "L" in LAMP (Score:3, Informative)

    by Mostly a lurker ( 634878 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @06:06PM (#14260018)
    IBM has been a good friend to those parts of the open source community that fit its overall strategy. However, the emphasis on Java shows the importance it places on trying to protect its WebSphere revenue.

  • Fantastic (Score:2, Insightful)

    by The Bungi ( 221687 )
    Maybe one of these days I'll see the source to DB2, Websphere, MQ and such. Heck, never mind the source... I'll settle for less draconian licensing. Open source and all that, IBM is now.

    Then again probably not.

    IBM can talk the talk all day but at the end of the day regardless of all the Linux lip service they really don't walk the walk, and probably never will.

    • Re:Fantastic (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      IBM can talk the talk all day but at the end of the day regardless of all the Linux lip service they really don't walk the walk, and probably never will.

      I haven't been an IBM employee for several years, but the friends I still have at IBM say that IBM still isn't eating its own food. They're pretty well standardized with Windows 2000/XP across all of their internal desktops and many of their lower end servers. You'd think that a company beating the OSS drum so violently would at least get Linux working

      • Re:Fantastic (Score:3, Insightful)

        by blair1q ( 305137 )
        This isn't quite hypocritical.

        IBM has a lot of legacy stuff (documents, enterprise apps, specialized business and engineering tools) that wouldn't operate cleanly in a Linux environment. Even if it's a small percentage of their information and tool base, it's an argument for backward compatibility.

        They can convince you to buy Linux if they can convince you to loose yourself from your legacy constraints. But they can't convince themselves because it would cost them more than they're willing to spend. You
      • That is not actually true. I have 2 friends that I've known for a many years who work at ibm and there entire department is on linux or freebsd. Don't ask me why or how freebsd got its way onto the desktops but it is probably like how I'm using linux at my office a 2nd machine, wine, or a vm or any other access or means to a windows system (and have had no problems either).

        So I'd have to say that your sysadmins are either pampering to the suits (who are all using win2k from what i understood) or a fairly sm

      • Parent is anti-IBM troll. (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Tell your "friend" (if he is real) to visit this intranet URL ( https://lifeboat.ibm.com/lifeboat/stats/lifeboat/ stathome.php [ibm.com]) for the latest statistics on Linux (6792 since April 2004) and Windows (867 since April 2004) installations inside the company. Keep in mind that this site only counts installs of the "official" IBM client images (both of which are installed via a custom made Debian boot cd, btw). Before April 2004, there were many thousands more installs of the older Linux image. And all this wa
        • I shouldn't really listen to rumours from an AC on Slashdot, but would you mind telling us if there is a Linux native Domino Designer client on the way or if it is just the Notes client embedded in Workplace? i.e. can I as a developer finally switch off Windows?

    • Re:Fantastic (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bckrispi ( 725257 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @07:17PM (#14260354)
      IBM can talk the talk all day but at the end of the day regardless of all the Linux lip service they really don't walk the walk, and probably never will.

      Have we forgotten already that the Eclipse foundation started with millions of lines of proprietary code donated by IBM?

    • DB2 probably won't ever see daylight (or AIX for that matter). Too many patent agreements and other things that would need to be resolved. I could see them offering PostgreSQL as an alternative for the same reason as Linux is an alternative to AIX.

      The big buyers will still get the DB2 / AIX combination but it gives them a chance to sell hardware and support to the little guy.

      IBM will (and does) support installations running PostgreSQL already in their managed solutions department.

  • What is significant about this announcement? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xmas2003 ( 739875 ) * on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @06:10PM (#14260034) Homepage
    While it's nice to read good news like this for the Linux community, this seems more like marketing people on both sides coming up with "something" to justify their existance ... is there some "meat" behind this or am I just missing it?

  • Java? (Score:5, Funny)

    by RManning ( 544016 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @06:14PM (#14260057) Homepage

    The The announcement was also heavy on the Java side, with both Red Hat and Novell pledging a 'reinforced commitment' to the Java developer community and J2EE.

    IBM is slipping. Don't they know that Java is so 90's [slashdot.org]?
    • Can it possibly be that Java -- once the hippest of hip software -- has become a legacy technology, as old and out of style as IBM's (IBM) mainframe computers and SAP's corporate applications?
      IBM is slipping. Don't they know that Java is so 90's?

      Slipping into the future?
    • If we're going to be like that, IBM is so 70's.

  • Novell and Java (Score:4, Interesting)

    by slashdotnickname ( 882178 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @06:21PM (#14260094)
    So Novell wants to reinforce their commitment to the Java community while at the same time funding Mono, a project porting .NET to Linux/etc...

    interesting... very interesting... (strokes soul patch)

    • Re:Novell and Java (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "So Novell wants to reinforce their commitment to the Java community while at the same time funding Mono"

      Outside of Novell, Mono is dead.

      This move by IBM has effectively put the final nail in the Mono coffin.

    • The friend of my competitor is not necessarily my enemy. Novell wants both to prosper on _their_ platform.

    • Re:Novell and Java (Score:3, Insightful)

      by m50d ( 797211 )
      Novell devotedly supports whatever their customers want. Which right now means both Java and .Net.
    • So Novell wants to reinforce their commitment to the Java community while at the same time funding Mono, a project porting .NET to Linux/etc...

      Novell doesn't know what they're funding nor do they know what they want to be using nor is their any direction from those high up in the company. That's why they're called Novell.

    • Re:Novell and Java (Score:2, Insightful)

      by int19h ( 156487 )

      This isn't very interesting at all.

      You can compile a java-program and run it under Mono.
      Eclipse runs under Mono.
      See: http://www.go-mono.com/images/ikvm-screenshot.png [go-mono.com]

      As the distinction between Java, .NET and Mono seems to be unclear to a few people, I'll throw in my "humble view":

      • Mono supports several langauges, that easily interoperate. Java supports one langugage.
        You can write in support for other languages in Java, like Jython, but this is not the point.
        A compiled function written in Boo can easily be

  • Article Summary (Score:3, Interesting)

    by olddotter ( 638430 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @06:24PM (#14260106) Homepage
    Basiclly this sounds like a defence against LAMP marketing statement. I belive that Java will remain popular in older large corporations. (Where I work they only recognize Java and ASP for web development. Everthing else is discouraged.)

    But I think Perl/PHP/etc. will continue to gain popularity ammoung smaller companies and pure web companies. (Ie. Companies that are more progressive in nature.)

    • Re:Article Summary (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      As has been spelt out every time a Java vs Ruby/Python/PHP/Perl story comes up, Java is for more than just web sites, whereas the AMP in LAMP (and their alternatives) are not.

      To a companys way of thinking, if more than LAMP is needed (Yes the much vaunted LAMP solution is sometimes inadequate), then Java is the way to go. And if they are already going down the Java path, why would they forgo what web technologies Java has for non Java tech where that can't leverage the work they need to do in Java anyway?

      In
  • The announcement was also heavy on the Java side, with both Red Hat and Novell pledging a 'reinforced commitment' to the Java developer community and J2EE.

    The only conclusion one can draw out of that article is that Novel and REdHat obviously don't read slashdot [slashdot.org] and therefore aren't real nerd and we shouldn't pay attention to them. Seriously.
    • I'm sure Redhat won't mind you as an end user not paying attention to them since they don't sell desktop software. But I am not sure how you can dismiss them as non-nerds they do have alot of good programmers over there.

  • Business (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Council ( 514577 )
    This has far less to do with Linux business usefulness, per se, as it does with IBM's continued attempts to publicize Linux to the larger world (see their Super Bowl ads).

    Which is a noble goal, certainly.
  • With these ISV's in the SAP at IBM, what TLA's will they TON?
  • Sure, it's fine to have that kind of software level support, but with their apparent lack of documentation (let alone support) of anything more powerful than a Matrox G450 (which is lowend for that kind of machine).

    There isnt even binary level support, which makes things very odd that they cripple their own hardware (see that there is no option for anything but a lowend GXT135P, a G450 PCI card) - given that it'd be fine to have enough documentation to run their highend GXT3xxx/4x00/6x00 video hardware.

    It's

  • Cool (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @08:57PM (#14260825) Homepage
    The The announcement was also heavy on the Java side, with both Red Hat and Novell pledging a 'reinforced commitment' to the Java developer community and J2EE."

    So does this mean we might be seeing a working Java implentation soon that isn't controlled by Sun?

  • If SCO beats IBM in court, or beats Novell in court, or... Oh, never mind
  • Don't look into 'em.
  • IBM talks about supporting Linux a lot. But try to buy a thinkpad with Linux installed on it. Can't do it.
    • Or at least they should sell a thiunkpad without MS Window for a lower price (I guess 60$/50E less would be right).

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