[OhMeadhbh]

IBM is a cash poor company that just doesn't have the resources to pay for the software it sells.</snark>

Seriously though, I am kind of curious why IBM can't cough up cash. I'm guessing it takes a while to set up a vendor in their system. So they probably //could// pay for a support contract, but by the time they set it up they'll have blown through some internal deadline. Or maybe this request is being made from a lower level person and someone in their reporting chain has blocked the idea of setting up a support contract.

My memory of IBM is they're pretty insular, the particular person involved could just not understand what open source is. For instance, I was hired into a team in Boca Raton in the late 80s because my resume said I had experience with multiple Virtual Machines (VMs). I actually had experience with VMS, which was an operating system from Digital Equipment Corporation. When I asked my boss about that, her response was "What's VMS? What's Digital Equipment Corporation?" Which was a very strange thing to say as they had (more than) decimated IBM's S/36 and S/38 sales. Later on when I worked for the AIX division, I found many people who were clueful.

I think what I'm saying is:

1. IBM is a big company. It's probably not accurate to judge the whole organization from one person's interaction.

2. You can survive at IBM without understanding the outside world. (though I'm just extrapolating that assertion from what I saw in the 80s,90s and late 2000s.)

[datavirtue]

This is what it's like at GE. Stocked with people who have been there their while life. They extrapolate what they know (GE) to the outside world and hence fail to understand almost everything impacting them. The people who come there mid-career are a distinct, and marginalized, class who don't really fit in (mostly because they aren't dillusional).