[plug] IBM reiterates Linux backing

[Denis Brown]

List,

I've just attended a seminar presented by IBM here in Perth and was 
impressed by their up-front support for Linux.  Okay, that's hardly 
surprising given Linux's popularity but in what seems to me a turn-around 
in attitude by IBM, they are beginning to embrace the collaborative model 
for programme development and support.  Officially they're going to support 
Caldera, RH, SuSE and TurboLinux and run it alongside their proprietary AIX 
Unix variant.  Thus AIX is targeted at the high-end systems, Linux at the 
lower end with some middle ground, such as web servers, supported by both 
flavours.

The interesting thing for me, apart from the almost evangelical enthusiasm, 
was the fact that this presentation was targeted at IBM's larger government 
and corporate clients where conservatism would normally have been the 
watchword.  High on the list of Linux's merits was the fact that new 
releases are made "when they're ready" rather than to a pre-planned 
timetable, leading to stability, reliability and high availability we 
respect in Linux.

Cheers,
Denis