Without this, they would've gone out of business entirely sometime in the early-mid 90s.
There is a problem with your timeline. My memory says that IBM only openly embraced open source in 1998, which means that it saved them later than you indicate.
Lemme look. (Searches, finds http://www.salon.com/technology/fsp/2000/09/12/chapter_7_par..., reads.) I was right. They joined the Apache Project in June. They released Jikes (a Java compiler for Linux) in July. In September it was open sourced. At the same time they ported DB2 to Linux. And, what I hadn't known, all of this happened at a skunkworks level. It was not until Dec. 14, 1998 that open source as an issue landed on Lou Gerstner's desk, and the decision was made that the whole company adopted an official policy on open source.
IBM hasn't invented anything worthwhile since the IBM PC in 1981.
Really? They introduced the AS 400 in 1987. I consider an operating system whose _average_ uptime in the field is better than 99.9% to be pretty worthwhile.
They commercialized gigantic magneto-resistance in 1997. That's in your hard drive right now, and gives it at least an order of magnitude improvement over what previous technology could do. I consider that pretty darned worthwhile as well.
IBM is a big company that does a lot of things. I'm sure they have some other cool stuff.
Other than those points, I agree with what you say.
IBM's "problem" is that they don't do consumer stuff.. So they can get slagged off as inventing nothing worthwhile since 1981 - because they don't make shiny toys like the iphone..
Your timeline is correct: the dam really started to break for open source and Linux when Mozilla got open sourced, and when Oracle announced they would release their Linux port. By the dot com boom, Linux was big business.
There is a problem with your timeline. My memory says that IBM only openly embraced open source in 1998, which means that it saved them later than you indicate.
Lemme look. (Searches, finds http://www.salon.com/technology/fsp/2000/09/12/chapter_7_par..., reads.) I was right. They joined the Apache Project in June. They released Jikes (a Java compiler for Linux) in July. In September it was open sourced. At the same time they ported DB2 to Linux. And, what I hadn't known, all of this happened at a skunkworks level. It was not until Dec. 14, 1998 that open source as an issue landed on Lou Gerstner's desk, and the decision was made that the whole company adopted an official policy on open source.
IBM hasn't invented anything worthwhile since the IBM PC in 1981.
Really? They introduced the AS 400 in 1987. I consider an operating system whose _average_ uptime in the field is better than 99.9% to be pretty worthwhile.
They commercialized gigantic magneto-resistance in 1997. That's in your hard drive right now, and gives it at least an order of magnitude improvement over what previous technology could do. I consider that pretty darned worthwhile as well.
IBM is a big company that does a lot of things. I'm sure they have some other cool stuff.
Other than those points, I agree with what you say.