What to make of IBM's silence about its desktop Linux policy?

That's significant news in its own right. I would bet we're hitting political resistance between factions within IBM now.

I wouldn't be surprised if money changed hands in the writing of this article... look at all that M$ advertising plastered all over it.

Anyway, it isn't usually a good idea to switch platforms just for the heck of it, dog food or no. If you have software to run on Windows, keep Windows boxes around, until you find -- or build -- an acceptable alternative. Cold turkey migration is rarely wise. That being said, I suspect that Redmond, just like earlier with Munich, is trying hard to make the most out of this.

Let them have the fun while it lasts.

"A while back, chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano challenged the company to move its desktops to Linux by the end of 2005. What's clear is that this hasn't happened and doesn't look like happening."

Isn't January 27 a little early to call this?

I mean, yeah, something is wrong at IBM in terms of their migration but this strikes as a odd bit of prognostication.

SFN: Yeah, I find all of this to be pointless. IBM may take years to do the migration -- who's to say. It's happening all around anyway. I remember people whining about how IE "won" the browser war.

Is the browser war "won" -- isn't it an on-going "battle"?!?

The whole idea of permanence as an IT concept is a moot point. Stuff is never fixed in stone as the whole FireFox thing illustrates. IBMs desktop migration has hit a snag. Big deal. They're still on the Linux side and will be for years to come.

I also know enough about corporate sourcing to say that likely the public announcement was timed -- if they were attempting to negotiate (or a major customer of theirs was doing the same) their pricing with Microsoft at the time, it might have been done to lower some pricing :-)

Guess we'll never know.