"IBM chief executive Louis Gerstner said Tuesday that his
company will spend $1 billion on Linux next year."
"Gerstner made the announcement at the eBusiness Conference and
Expo in New York, where IBM also revealed a Linux supercomputer win
with Shell Oil."
"The Linux investment underscores IBM's increasing commitment to
the operating system, across all product lines: PCs, portables,
servers and mainframes."
"IBM is making the commitment, Gerstner said, because it "is
convinced that Linux can do for business applications what the
Internet did for networking and communications"--make computing
easier and free from proprietary operating systems."