[CS-FSLUG] Comments on Sam Palmisano of IBM

[Don Parris]

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 20:39:01 -0600, N. Thompson <n.thomp at sasktel.net> wrote:
> On February 13, 2005 05:15 pm, Bradly McConnell wrote:
> > Greetings All,
> >
> > Well I just wanted to poll the group and see if anyone has an opinion
> > about Sam Palmisano or Lous Gerstner of IBM, mainly focusing on Sam.
> > Since he has been the driving force for IBM's move toward Linux, I
> > just wanted to see what you guys have to say.
> >
<SNIP>
> 
> If IBM is already doing these things than I want to hear about it, I've been
> waiting for a long time to have a distribution polished enough that Windows
> users will take one look at it and at least consider it. I know I'm going to
> get in hot water for mentioning these here but who amongst you list members
> can honestly say that GNU/Linux is 100% better than Windows or Mac OS X when
> it still has rough edges hidden behind all that eye candy and neat software.
> Furthermore, who amongst you list members can say that Linux wouldn't benefit
> from from a prosperous company investing in the operating system's future
> with not only money but professionally written code and bug fixes?
> 
> --
> http://celerate.blogspot.com/
> 
> _______________________________________________

Microsoft offers professionally written code and bug fixes.  I am
constantly reminded of the security issues related to their
professionally written code and bug fixes.  At times, even their
patches have to be patched.  While I have noticed Konqueror not
updating automatically, I have not had problems with it crashing (SUSE
9.2).  When it comes to which problem I would rather have, suffice it
to say that I did my Windows cleaning last November.  I cleaned
Windows right off my hard drive. ;)

I'm not attacking you.  Nor am I suggesting that GNU/Linux doesn't
need improvement - it does.  I am suggesting that "professionally
written code" could be a euphemism for "bug-ridden" or "security
hassle".  It's like "professional" technical support.  When I asked
folks on a couple of e-mail lists about their experience with
professional tech support, I got a mixed response.  One guy called the
software vendor's tech support, only to be directed to their most
experienced customer - himself.

A lot of the open source software is actually well-written code - much
of it is professionally written.  Even if the developers are
volunteering their efforts, many are professional programmers. 
Another point is that, in an open source project, one has to manage
the development efforts differently than in a business project.  A
perfectly good project can split, just as happened with EMACS and
X-EMACS.

On the other hand, professional DB folks offer very encouraging words
about the design of CHADDB, even though I am a novice database
designer.  I got some input from pros, but still, I did do the overall
design.  The biggest tips I got were about naming the tables and an
idea for the "category" and "code" tables.  So, for GNU and the Linux
kernel to be as polished as they are, especially given the fact they
had some "catching up" to do, is very telling of the future of
computing.

If IBM is going to support FOSS, it should put some money into it,
which I believe it does.  Maybe they could put more into it, I don't
know.  I really don't know a whole lot about IBM's involvement in the
open source community.  I really only know that they are.

Don
-- 
DC Parris GNU Evangelist
http://matheteuo.org/
gnumathetes at gmail.com
Free software is like God's love - 
you can share it with anyone anywhere anytime!