Not really. The IBM Academy reported that open source software was the single biggest threat to their business model, so they "invested" in Linux to keep their foot in the door. They've had mindshare at Apache and Redhat for almost 2 decades now. I don't think they'll make any money from that investment.
IBM is a consulting company, and the open source business model is all about consulting, so I don't know what threat you're referring to. In any case, while you may use air quotes, they invested actual hard cash at a time when Linux was struggling to gain a foothold and was not considered a serious UNIX challenger. I'm not saying Linux owes them everything, but it sure does help when a giant company like IBM backs you.
I guess I should have said "When I was at IBM, the academy released a report, etc." No air quotes, required; I was there. I was on the open source community of practice core team at the time.
My point is that IBM didn't invest in open source to improve it, they invested to take advantage of it. Open source software was still frowned on since "free" was a dirty word in that culture. We never sold it in our deals. The explosion of innovation and creativity created by the open source community never reached IBM. We just kept selling Websphere and Domino. I think it was 2008 before CENTOS started creeping into our solutions. IBM did not buy Redhat because they believe in Linux. They did it to buy market share.
