4 ms·

Oof. Anyone else worried about the amount of GNU infrastructure (GCC, GLibc, etc) that has fallen into IBM's hands -and what will happen with it in the future?

by rnd0 5y ago

pjmlp 5y ago
Well, IBM among others, provided the initial money to make Linux relevant anyway. > Commercial use began when Dell and IBM, followed by Hewlett-Packard, started offering Linux support to escape Microsoft's monopoly in the desktop operating system market -- Wikipedia
- rnd0 5y ago
  Linux isn't GNU, and there have been a rise of projects that prove exactly that. If we reach the point where redhat pulls the cash out from GNU then there's a lot of infrastructure that will be lost. I find it alarming that no one ever seems to mention that.
  - dralley 5y ago
    Perhaps people should worry less and contribute more, to prevent such concerns from becoming problems in the first place. If your company is making use of Linux, GCC, OpenSSL and so forth, they should be setting aside some engineering resources to contribute to those projects, especially if they aren't paying a corporate vendor like RH, SUSE, or Canonical to do it on their behalf. Naturally, the "tragedy of the commons" is that everyone wants to take advantage of free software while contributing back as little as possible, usually while simultaneously complaining or handwringing about those that are actually contributing. Why is it that this conversation has turned from Apple and Google, with a combined market cap over 4 trillion dollars pulling their resources from these foundational projects, to handwringing that Red Hat, with a 125x smaller valuation might pull their resources from GNU, something there is no indication of happening? Surely the focus ought to be in the other direction...
    - rofrol 5y ago
      >As of October 2021 IBM has a market cap of $128.91 Billion. This makes IBM the world's 112th most valuable company by market cap according to our data. https://companiesmarketcap.com/ibm/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/ibm/marketcap/
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - jabl 5y ago
    > If we reach the point where redhat pulls the cash out from GNU then there's a lot of infrastructure that will be lost. I find it alarming that no one ever seems to mention that. IIRC Redhat withdrew funding from FSF after they decided to put RMS back on the board. But AFAICS they haven't reduced funding for developing GNU software. Lets put it this way; RH doesn't contribute to GCC out of the goodness of their hearts, but due to GCC being a critical component of the Linux distro (RHEL) and other similar product support offerings they make their money from. If they drop GCC development, it'll be because something else has replaced GCC and they figure it's better to concentrate their efforts there, or because their business as a whole is going down the drain. For the time being I don't really see either option as particularly likely.

Oof. Anyone else worried about the amount of GNU infrastructure (GCC, GLibc, etc) that has fallen into IBM's hands -and what will happen with it in the future?

by rnd0 5y ago

Oof. Anyone else worried about the amount of GNU infrastructure (GCC, GLibc, etc) that has fallen into IBM's hands -and what will happen with it in the future?

pjmlp 5y ago

Well, IBM among others, provided the initial money to make Linux relevant anyway. > Commercial use began when Dell and IBM, followed by Hewlett-Packard, started offering Linux support to escape Microsoft's monopoly in the desktop operating system market -- Wikipedia

rnd0 5y ago
Linux isn't GNU, and there have been a rise of projects that prove exactly that. If we reach the point where redhat pulls the cash out from GNU then there's a lot of infrastructure that will be lost. I find it alarming that no one ever seems to mention that.
- dralley 5y ago
  Perhaps people should worry less and contribute more, to prevent such concerns from becoming problems in the first place. If your company is making use of Linux, GCC, OpenSSL and so forth, they should be setting aside some engineering resources to contribute to those projects, especially if they aren't paying a corporate vendor like RH, SUSE, or Canonical to do it on their behalf. Naturally, the "tragedy of the commons" is that everyone wants to take advantage of free software while contributing back as little as possible, usually while simultaneously complaining or handwringing about those that are actually contributing. Why is it that this conversation has turned from Apple and Google, with a combined market cap over 4 trillion dollars pulling their resources from these foundational projects, to handwringing that Red Hat, with a 125x smaller valuation might pull their resources from GNU, something there is no indication of happening? Surely the focus ought to be in the other direction...
  - rofrol 5y ago
    >As of October 2021 IBM has a market cap of $128.91 Billion. This makes IBM the world's 112th most valuable company by market cap according to our data. https://companiesmarketcap.com/ibm/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/ibm/marketcap/
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- jabl 5y ago
  > If we reach the point where redhat pulls the cash out from GNU then there's a lot of infrastructure that will be lost. I find it alarming that no one ever seems to mention that. IIRC Redhat withdrew funding from FSF after they decided to put RMS back on the board. But AFAICS they haven't reduced funding for developing GNU software. Lets put it this way; RH doesn't contribute to GCC out of the goodness of their hearts, but due to GCC being a critical component of the Linux distro (RHEL) and other similar product support offerings they make their money from. If they drop GCC development, it'll be because something else has replaced GCC and they figure it's better to concentrate their efforts there, or because their business as a whole is going down the drain. For the time being I don't really see either option as particularly likely.