David Weaver

IBM Open-Sourcing AIX or Power?

In a new article (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/16/ibm_sun_open_source), The Register interviewed IBM about open source projects and strategy. IBM spokespeople offered some intriging comments, containing some amazing (and entertaining) insights. I'm irresistably compelled to have a little fun and share them here ...

When asked if/when IBM would be following Sun's lead and open source its AIX operating system or implementations of its Power processor architecture, IBM replied,

"Open source is about communities, not releasing ... large pieces of code that nobody is interested in or contributing to"

Good point -- 4,500,000 downloads clearly indicate that no one out there is interested in OpenSolaris. Those 5 million lines of source code sure are sitting on the shelf, getting terribly dusty.

As compared to all the downloads of open-source AIX, of course. Or the open-source Power implementations -- IBM has open-sourced so many (zero) Power implementations, why, nothing else compares.

...but ... but ... wait a minute, what was the original question? I almost forgot. Oh yes, if/when would IBM open-source AIX and Power? IBM's answer, buried in verbal mice-type, somewhere in the midst of providing a new, definitive description of the meaning of open source, was "Um ... well ... NO, IBM isn't open-sourcing either AIX or Power". (Glad I had my reading glasses on, or I might have missed it!)

Then there was another fun nugget in the article:

OpenSolaris and OpenSPARC are not "great examples of tremendous traction"

Regarding OpenSolaris (the most robust, scalable operating system on the planet) -- "ditto" the earlier comment about 4.5 million downloads. No traction there ... none at all.

Regarding OpenSPARC -- the vast number (zero) of Power processor implementations that IBM has open-sourced, especially current ones (IBM says "no way"), gives it tremendous credibility to comment on open-source hardware projects, so OpenSPARC must not have any traction, despite its tons of downloads. And there have been soooo many open-source hardware projects of this magnitude before, that OpenSPARC must be just a "me-too" project. (including OpenSPARC, the exact number of such projects would be ... yes, that's right: one).

Nowadays, it is so "last century" to open-source your most up-to-date, 32-thread, 8-core, 64-bit processor; it seems like everyone is doing it!
(...but, wait -- everyone who has a 32-thread, 8-core, 64-bit processor has open-sourced it. Notably, that big company who started it all ... the one known for innnovation, the one with the three-letter name [spelled S-u-n])

So check out The Register article -- it's fine (and fun) reading!

[ T: OpenSPARC ]

Posted at 05:06PM Aug 16, 2006 by dweaver in Sun  |