On Wednesday afternoon, I passed a man wearing a tee shirt that read "Open Source Took Us to Mars", a reference to the use of various open source software in processing the data from the Curiosity rover. Of course I then had to look back to see what the back of his shirt said, which was "Red Hat". Red Hat is one of the oldest and most successful providers of Linux distributions, so this wasn't a surprise.
But IBM recently purchased Red Hat. That also is not astonishing, for IBM has supported the use of Linux virtual machines on top of its systems for a long time. Yet when one thinks of open source software, one thinks of young coders, casually groomed, and in casual clothing. That was not at all the IBM style. It is said that many years ago the way one established one's genius at IBM was to grow a beard: if one was not fired, the world saw that one was too intelligent to fire. And a salesman once employed by IBM told of the shock a co-worker produced by wearing a dress shirt that was blue rather than white.
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