The most likely way to get IBM to sponsor WINE development

[David Elliott]

On 2002.01.11 23:01 dschwarz at bellatlantic.net wrote:
> 
> I've been following this discussion with some interest. I am a former
> Iris/Lotus/IBM employee, and I now run the Winecentric pages
> www.winecentric.com, basically a faq on how to run Lotus Notes and other
> programs under WINE.
> 
> I have had unofficial conversations with Lotus product development
> managers; they have reacted to customer requests for the Lotus Notes
> client
> on Linux by doing their own testing, and they even publish an official
> page
> outlining how to run Lotus Notes with WINE.  They don't offer customer
> support (that would cost millions).
> 
> The best way to get IBM to sponsor WINE development is to persuade them
> to
> port their flagship applications to Linux. IBM/Lotus have a long history
> of
> using API translators to port products across platforms, including Lotus
> Notes and SmartSuite.
> 
Hmm, I almost forgot about that in my other mail.. When IBM ported the 
Lotus stuff to OS/2 they /DID/ write Open32 to do this.  However Open32 is 
not (and was never supposed to be) the full API.  Thus why Odin exists.  
Originally designed to build on top of Open32 I think they gave up on that 
goal long ago and started borrowing code from Wine.  In fact, lately one 
of the Odin developers mentioned he would be willing to release any part 
we of it we would like to the Wine project under the Wine license.  Might 
be worth a look.

> If they were persuaded to port, say, VisualAge for Java and SmartSuite,
> using Winelib, we'd gain some new applications plus (hopefully) IBM would
> contribute any Winelib enhancements back.
> 

Yes, this is how they could probably best help the Wine project, their 
business, and Linux in general.  Remember that IBM is all about providing 
the best experience for the customer (at least making it seem like they 
are :-).  They also seem to be all about embracing (but not smothering) 
open standards.  And furthermore above all they seem to be about 
interoperability.

IBM had made numerous mistakes trying to lock people into IBM stuff but 
couldn't do it successfully (MS has really beaten them here, much to IBMs 
disappointment I am sure).  OS/2 was basically nothing more than an 
attempt to lock everyone into IBM computers running IBMs OS.  That follows 
on the heels of IBMs long history of locking people into IBM tech.  I 
think the absolute failure of OS/2 was really the turning point for IBM.  
Now IBM seems more interested in not being a slave to anyone and not 
making anyone a slave to them.  I think this is why Linux is so important 
to them.

Ah well, it'll be interesting to look back at this mail in 5 years or so 
and see what has happened.  Probably MS will have completely dominated 
everything except for the people who are using Linux because they like it 
and always have (i.e. the people on this list for the most part).  Of 
course you know what they say... the bigger they are... the harder they 
fall.

-Dave