Nekochan Net

I actually don't see, how any of this might have any impact on IBMs customership, because IBM isn't interested in the small fishes, that's not where the big money is coming from (which is why IBM dropped its thinkpads). Larger customers simply have a support contract, which is why it doesn't matter to their customer base.

so it is not the case, that IBM will charge an additional cost for accessing their patches, it only locks out the small fishes, that don't bring any money to them anyway (which is sad for us hobbyists, but totally understandable from a business point of view)

I understand what you are saying but we have verifiable proof that it does matter, even for IBM. In fact, especially for IBM. After their history they should be the very last company to do this. The IBM example is the one that should be up on the wall for all to contemplate. Technocrats snivel about "foo-foo classes at University" but in fact, more of those business d00ds should have some literature jammed down their throats. If they'd read any Greek tragedy they might not make these stupid stupid mistakes. HUBRIS !!

IBM invented the peecee, you know. No, not the "personal computer" but the IBM-compatible peecee that is a gazillion-dollar business today.

IBM also had the world's worst three-losing-quarters in a row and almost lost the entire company as soon as people had a viable alternative to their slimy arrogant "fuck the world, we're IBM" attitude. When clones came out people could not get away from IBM fast enough. Do you want to bet your company that there will never be an alternative to your crap behavior ?*

This short-term greedy stupidity will have consequences down the road. Oedipus did fine for a long long time but in the end his initial errors destroyed him. That was the point.

Lesson One : consequences are inevitable. That foo-foo feel-good literature crap is more relevant than our modern-day MBA's will accept**. People are still people, no matter how modern we are.

The "business point of view" will do nothing over the long run except destroy companies (and societies). Period. That's the point of Greek tragedy.



* A major problem with the US today is that CEO's could care less about the company. If they can get enough cash out in one or two years to make themselves wealthy the company can go directly to Hell, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Yet we idolize these worthless bastards. Americans are incredibly stoopid.

**Actually, MBA's are too retarded to understand the meaning of literature - if they had an IQ over thirty they'd get a real degree, but that's another subject.

that's one nice and long paragraph, that you have written, which boils down to "IBM lost the PC-business, because of clones"...yes, that's how the PC-business works, it's made that way, that's not the case for mainframes or i or AIX (yes it is a unix, but it's probably the most different unix in current existence, so porting should be everything but trivial). there simply will be no easy alternative

and to repeat the essence of my previous posting: none of the customers relevant to IBM will notice any difference, they don't have to pay more, because they already have a support contract

There is no hope for the world.

It's all gonna end next year anyway

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-ks



See them all >here<

I stocked up pretty well, downloading and burning to DVDs mostly all the available stuff from 4.3.3 to 7.1. I might consider uploading a torrent in the distant future, should the desire arise.

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IBM pSeries 610 | type: 7028-6E1

Agree. IBM doesn't care, since nobody runs AIX except on enterprise equipment on contract. Same thing with Oracle, nobody runs SPARC servers except for enterprise customers on contracts.

It does suck that we the hobbyists who have POWER or SPARC hardware are getting screwed from all angles, but it doesn't affect IBM or Oracle business. As far as they know we simply don't exist.

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Paint It Blue

I'd imagine that given the economic situation there are probably a number of smaller companies who have AIX boxes to run some software, perhaps not mission-critical but something old that they still need, who are looking for ways to minimize recurring expenses. Of course, IBM obsoleting newer "old hardware" might render this a non-issue, since there's no point in paying for support that IBM will not provide.

I also heard that in the HP case it was done because there were companies offering HP-UX support who were cheaper and offered better service than HP, so HP is trying to choke them out. Now IBM support is (or at least was) top notch, so that might not be an issue.

Besides - figure that if 10 people/companies/whatever pick up service contracts or maintain service contracts that they would have otherwise let lapse IBM has probably "made money from the switch".

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Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

Systems available for remote access on request.

(single-CM)

The warehouse where I got my 7028 for free has been using AIX for some 15+ years. They upgrade their servers every 5 years or so, so technically they have that "support contract". Just an example of a non-enterprise company that uses IBM and AIX.

BTW, I uploaded the updates for 4.3.3 and 5L.

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IBM pSeries 610 | type: 7028-6E1

They may be "non-enterprise," but they're paying IBM, so IBM's happy. IBM sales is much smarter than SGI's salesforce from the '90s - they're happy to sell to anyone ready to give them money, rather than saying "You want to buy two?? Stop bothering us and come back when you're ready to buy 100."

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Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

Systems available for remote access on request.

(single-CM)

Also, it looks like the downloads are still accessible. I just tried and it works. I also dled some Java6 and rpm.rte packages. All I had to do is log in. This isn't to say that they won't cut off the downloads completely at some point.

I wish I had a POWER4 at least so I can do AIX 6.1 or AIX 7.1 as 5.3 is running out of service soon. Oh well.

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IBM pSeries 610 | type: 7028-6E1