Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Q&A: IBM's Steve Mills on CA, the Sun/Microsoft pact, outsourcing - Computerworld

Q&A: IBM's Steve Mills on CA, the Sun/Microsoft pact, outsourcing - Computerworld: "Given your commitment to Linux, would it make strategic sense for you to take the route Novell Inc. took with its acquisition of SUSE Linux AG and acquire a Linux distributor of your own -- say, Red Hat Inc.? We've chosen very explicitly not to be a Linux distributor.
[Mills:] We decided that the way the Linux community was evolving, that IBM being a distributor was not required for Linux to be successful, and it probably wouldn't be helpful for IBM to be a distributor. Those are very tough business models. Red Hat has a lot of market cap -- they don't have a lot of business results. It's very challenging to try to build a company around what's essentially a free product. "

(p.s. sorry about the sparse posts over the last few days; I was on a mini-vacation. Back to my normal routine tomorrow.)

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