“IBM is poised to gain a ‘stranglehold’ over the Linux
community, Gartner warned today. Speaking exclusively to
vnunet.com, George Weiss, research director for server and
operating systems at Gartner, said: “The biggest problem IBM has is
it that appears to the Linux community that it is trying to take
over the Linux momentum and grab what this OS has to offer.”
“Weiss said he could see a day when “80 per cent of the
revenues, indirect or direct, attributed to Linux will go into IBM
coffers unless companies like HP, Red Hat and VA Linux smarten up
their act. IBM will have a stranglehold on the community.”
“IBM told Weiss about its plans for the open source
operating system in a meeting this week. “They are aware of the
problem. They said they were trying to contribute back to the
community and mentioned making the source code for Sash
[development software for desktops] for Linux available. IBM
people are gracious but they have a business to run. It’s a
delicate balance.”