dinner with IBM

[Charles Steinkuehler]

> Over time it will dawn on them that it's actually the other way
> around. Remember, the GPL is viral. :-)
>
> On a serious note, as long as they do not co-opt the fundamental
> values of open sourcing, giving back to the community, and
> freedom of information (ie standing up against things like DMCA)
> I'm all for what they're doing. IBM has consistently put out some
> of the finest quality hardware in the industry, for about thirty
> years, and I'm attracted to quality.

I ran across this today...kind of applicable to the discussion at hand,
and even mentions the IBM / linux thing explicitly:
http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html

IMHO he does a good job of explaining at least one of the reasons
for-profit companies would want to write free software.

> Remember those old IBM
> keyboards? You could drive a Mack truck through them and
> they'd still be ticking... So many generics around these days
> I long for the IBM quality touch.

One of my favorite KB's as well...I wish they made an ergo version (or
if they do, that I had the ambition to find it and the money to buy one
:-).  I'm currently using an M$ Natural KB (the first rev...the one that
weighs a ton).  Only thing is, it confuses my KVM switch (yes, I have
isolated it to the KB).  Only Microsoft could manage to make a keyboard
that can crash a KVM switch (Belkin 4 port...I have a new-to-me Apex
Outlook 8 port I have yet to try...hopefully it will work better).

Charles Steinkuehler
charles at steinkuehler.net