[vorbis] IBM invests $ 10^9 in Linux, maybe they'll sponsor Vorbis?

[Roland Nagtegaal]

On Wed, Dec 13, 2000 at 09:57:31AM -0600, Steven Bailey wrote:
> The danger with IBM (speaking as one who is aquainted with numerous
> ex-IBM-employees) is that they are extremely cutthroat.  If they like
> your idea, they are more likely to attempt a hostile takeover than
> become benevolent sponsors and guardians.  There may have been policy

Then they could do that right now anyway.

> changes in recent years, but IBM doesn't have a great track record for
> its dealings with other companies.

The more reason that Fraunhofer would think twice before messing with them.

Point is: IBM is going to invest $ 10^9 in Linux. That is serious money even
for multinational standards.
Linux is open and GPL etc.,etc. They must have done thorough research 
into all aspects of it, including its openness, before making the decision
of investing that much money.

I have no illusions at all about the benevolence of IBM or any other 
multinational. 

I just think in this case that supporting Vorbis could be actually good
strategy for them.

Other things to consider:

- They donated a filesystem to the linux kernel.
- they added proprietary stuff to apache but released it when pressured by
  the apache people.
- finishing the audio codec and developing a video codec can't really cost more
  than a million or two, or? That's pocket money at the scale of 10^9.
- improving linux audio/video subsystems is in their interest, because they
  want to push linux for small businessess, which means on the desktop.
  

> Of course, if you COULD get them to ally themselves with you, I'd say
> you'd be in pretty awesome shape.

Never shooting is always missing. (or whatever the expression is)

> 
> Steven

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