Hi OpenBSD emailing list and others relating to the IBM Power platform. IBM is on BCC here and I encourage you send a paper copy to your executives who do have authority to donate i.e. the people who write and sign your budgets - I guess that would be your CEO and board, however you know this better than me - to share a third-party impression of a community member in dealing with your company.
This is neither to fame or de-fame your company, but to share an experience of asking for a coffee-money-size donation to enable the implementation of support for a popular open source program for your products. My experience provides me with nine months of constant hints that, while members of your staff personally are well intended and would be happy to work really well with the world, in this respect, your organization as such is in a state of utter disability. The really relevant people have been plugged in for about three months. Nine months have passed and there have been no indication of any intention of real or proactive steps to make things happen. Please do make things happen in 2017, or competition will take over and your community may get more of a "meh" feel about your stuff and attitudes, leading to possible extensive and essentially-irreversible damage on your end, which may be what you effectively intend to get in all cases, and if so in all cases this email helps the community understand that that is what you want, which is great. AMD donated ten AMD64 devices in 2003. That you not have done the same expediently has been a surprise to me, and this email is only to share that surprise. At some point soon I will have taken the point that your company is disabled in those respects. *Overview* This email is to provide a summary of * Where the conversation has gone this year, with respect to me suggesting IBM to donate some Power8 hardware for OpenBSD to implement architecture support for it, and * A brief commentary on my experience, which gives me an impression that the people planning IBM's budgets are struck by blind stupid greed, in a way that hurts themselves and others, and hence * A suggestion to those same people to shape up in 2017, so that their actually useful tech can come to actual use here and elsewhere. *The first seven months: Talking to the wrong people, essentially total ignorance* I started in March. I emailed their ex-CEO, some sales guys, and their "IBM Gives" team. None answered. By some luck, I got to a guy at their Linux Center in Brazil who said he was authorized to donate one device, he said they probably would be able to donate a couple more next year but couldn't promise. Me/we clarifying we needed at the very least four, seemed to put them off, and eventually he said the device had gone into other use, and after that he pretty much dropped out, suggesting I should talk to "someone else". By pure coincidence, I got an introduction to some people a bit higher up in the food chain, and those people essentially wouldn't give a damn. *Eighth and ninth month: Finally getting in touch with their highest management* However, by continuing to talk to them and getting fairly upset at their ignorance, I added two people refered to in an out of office email response, and that just happened to take me to their Director of Global Power Ecosystems and Alliances who is based in the US. That was mid October. She was somehow taking a stand, which I found trust-inspiring. These people were insisting that we would use their "hosted emulator". I reasoned that, partially considering their enormous ignorance for the past six month, them donating is essential, as we're seeing they're extremely slow and donating could cause a severe lag in making the architecture support production-grade, which indeed requires real hardware. This lady asked me to specify which specific devices I would ask to be donated, and their extremely high up tech contacts I got, including Mr. Stewart, graciously helped me figure which should be requested. After about five weeks, she delegated the case to their OpenSource Technology Development & OpenPower Enablement who is based in Australia. Which sounded slightly unintuitive to me as I would think hardware donation authorizations more likely would be made from the US. *IBM staff seeming to have no authority* I had an in-depth conversation with their highest-up technology team, and they suggested that I greatly over-estimate how much actual Power8 hardware they themselves are having lying around. The ultimate question seemed to be that for them to donate, "someone needs to pay" and therefore it needs to be put on some budget. I was suggested a sense of problem about donating as the devices are "expensive". I find this an interesting argument for a global corporation with 80 billion USD turnover. And then they gave me some nonsensical suggestions about going through some hoops, that if I-we do this-whatever then they will be impelled to, and so on. They are perfectly entitled to suggest anyone to go through any hoops for them to care or maybe care, however, that does not inspire any sense of material goodwill or reason to care, with me. They admitted that there is a real lack of organization and structure within IBM to deal with anything else than selling hardware, as seen by the total ignorance and cluelessness that I was met by for months on end. My conclusion up to this point is that all the people in charge of IBM's Power architecture are strapped in a very hierarchic slow structure that gives them no mandate or space for anything. At the same times, they are the very executives and managers who are supposed to make the architecture fly. Meaning, technically they are well intended, but they don't have any powers whatsoever. Me suggesting these particular people to donate hardware in a situation like that is obviously like asking a starving child on the savannah to hand you a sausage and an icecream - torturous. While admittedly the hardware donation request I presented to them is unusual, it's by no means extraordinary, and it's important to see that in a multifactorial world that presents paramount competition, a structure must provide some flexibility beyond that of ceramic, to really live. A strict doing-anything-for-profit is not a winner. A café whose policy is to force people to order before sitting down on their chairs, will not thrive. *Impressions of stupid greed from stakeholders* My conclusion for the time being is that IBM's stakeholders have basically strapped their organization and hierarchy of everything - a massive love deprivation - yet expect their child to be singing and performing. And so currently they cherish themselves as winners in their practice of "blind greed", and, totally miss slightly more subtle qualities in the market, such as the power of the influencer role that all people who actually use their stuff, have. And in this line of reasoning, they think it's OK to use OpenSSH from OpenBSD, across the board, and reap benefit of that, while giving "f**k-you":s to the same people when asked for coffee money. These are the people who sense entitlement to force a sausage or icecream from anyone. I will be glad to follow how IBM handles this situation, and indeed ten devices might just show up on the mail someday. They have perfectly free will and are under no obligation to do anything, and I perfectly respect that. With that said, I do have a sense of "blind greed" going on among the people at IBM who do have the authority to donate, and I suggest that the universal honor system indeed takes careful notice of that, and damages that are difficult-to-impossible are incurred all over the place, in various forms such as negative internal marketing at IBM itself (i.e. waking up to the realization that unnice people live upstream in your building), bad PR with people for whom IBM matters such as myself who carry these experiences on everywhere including to those who make buying decisions, and finally strategically, in the way that the fierce competition is getting advantages with every day that goes. This is the very force that makes old business go out of business, and new humble business thrive. So, shame on you, people managing IBM's budgets, for being so short-sighted that you break things for yourselves and others, without need. "Me-me-me" strategies may have been compatible with business success some decades ago. You are naturally entitled to run such strategies, but I don't see the viability as lasting. Please do improve in 2017. *Summary* I do like the Power architecture as a useful alternative or replacement to crappy AMD64. I have donated something like 70 emails and 10 hours of time this year to suggest to them that donating some hardware to get more architecture support is the very cheapest marketing they'll get ever in perpetuity. The Power tech is useful. It would be nice to see donations happen. I will be the happiest to post public thanks to IBM for doing the right thing. As of yet I have no indication whatsoever that they will do that. I would be glad to be positively surprised in this respect in 2017. Of course others can donate too. In either case, the world will go on. Mikael
