04.25.10
IBM Should Have Gone With rPath
Summary: IBM missed an opportunity to reward the father of GNU/Linux appliances, which is also not paying Microsoft for Linux
IBM, which loves to portray itself as an innovative company even decades after it helped invent some fundamentals of computing, has been getting close to Novell recently [1, 2]. But IBM merely rewards an imitator and possibly pretends that Novell has something to do with appliances. Sutor writes about “Appliances and Linux”, claiming that “This can be done manually or more easily via a tool like Novell’s SUSE Studio.” (we too had our SUSE appliance)
Had IBM cared about originators, it would then go to the source. Novell has a history of just copying other people’s ideas (sometimes even partners like Astrum) and then mass-marketing the copycats, pretty much like Microsoft does. IBM could have gone with rPath developers, whom Novell simply copied while shamelessly and falsely claiming credit for their ideas. █
Content is available under CC-BY-SA
Jose_X said,
April 25, 2010 at 2:30 pm
IBM might want to help Novell survive and perhaps even change from helping Microsoft’s dotnet to contributing to other FOSS (perhaps something that benefits IBM more). Novell’s assets and employees, under different hands, could be used more aggressively against IBM (and also Linux) interests. In any case, it’s always preferable to have more businesses on your side.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
April 25th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
IBM has been supporting SUSE for a long time (the mainframes use it). I think it cares about Novell only because of eDirectory and other such monoculture disablers.
IBM uses Novell to keep Red Hat on their toes, and vice versa. This gives IBM more control.