How about sponsoring from IBM?

[Jeremy White]

Roland wrote:

> At 08:35 AM 1/11/02 -0600, Paul Clarke wrote:
> 
>> My attempt to convince you otherwise:
>>
>> http://oss.software.ibm.com/developer/opensource/linux
>> http://www.ibm.com/linux
>>
>> Paul Clarke, IBM
> 
> 
> Good, so it really seems that IBM is commited to Linux. Now my question 
> is, would it be too much to ask IBM to spend 1% of that 1 billion for 
> Linux on WINE? Of course we are assuming that a full-featured WINE would 
> DRASTICALLY increase the success of Linux. This would be in accordance 
> with:
> "...with a shared vision of making Linux succeed." quote from  
> http://www-124.ibm.com/developer/opensource/linux/
> 
> If the assumption is true I think those 10 Million would be the best 
> spent part of that 1 Billion.
> Paul, do you know the people in charge of the Linux sponsoring? How 
> about talking to them about this idea? It would be interesting to hear 
> what they say. Maybe they even don't know about the WINE project...


Many people at IBM know about Wine; in fact a lot of developers
there depend on it everyday (IBM is standardized on Notes
for messaging...).

Many non developers also know about it, if for no other reason
that I've been a pest.<grin>

One senior manager at IBM explained it to me as follows:
Most senior management at IBM has been with the company for a long time.
Most of those went through the OS/2 era.  Many people may not realize it,
but IBM put their heart and soul into OS/2 - and were
burned very, very badly by it.  As a consequence, many
people at IBM are understandably very reluctant to contemplate
another attack on Windows dominance of the desktop.

This doesn't mean that I think helping Wine would be bad for IBM
(or I wouldn't have been such a pest), but it may help folks
to understand why IBM isn't very focused on Linux as a desktop OS.

Jeremy