[NCLUG] IBM Linux contest for students

[John L. Bass]

The history goes something like this. In the late 60's thru mid 70's many
school districts were running their records on unit record tab equipment
and early computers (that were faster tab equipment) - 1401's 1410's, 1620's, 
and small 360 series machines. Much of this equipment was more expensive to
keep running (maint contract) than to purchase/lease.  When the 370 series
machines were introduced, IBM ended up taking back a lot of higher end 360's
that there wasn't much of a market for since it was expensive to maintain,
including some notable machines like the 360/50. IBM "gave away" a number
of "free upgrades" to these higher end machines, if they would agree to
assume the larger maint contract. While this practice was originally assumed
to be benificial to both parties, in the end it was largely observed to be
mostly to IBM's gain since they significantly increased their cash flow
from the practice, while draining schools budgets making it difficult to
free up the funds for newer cheaper to operate minicomputer systems, such
as early UNIX PDP-11 machines which were frequently much more powerful than
the dinasour 360 system the devoured the computing budget.

Clearly this isn't on the same scale budget wise - but it's sometimes
important to consider past lessons learned in a new light. If the offer
had been for class/lab PC's I wouldn't have thought much about it, central
resource server machines that need high uptime, and probably maint budgets,
raises other questions about being a "gift or prize" or more like "loss leader".

Have Fun,
John


	From: Mike Loseke <mike at verinet.com>
	Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2001 13:40:15 -0600 (MDT)

	Thus spake John L. Bass:
	> Evelyn Mitchell <efm at tummy.com> writes:
	> > 
	> > Looks like student projects can win their school an IBM mainframe
	> > running Linux:
	> > 
	> > http://www-4.ibm.com/software/info/students/contests/linux/
	> > 
	> > Evelyn Mitchell
	> 
	> Sounds like a throwback to the 1970's where they locked many school districts
	> into maint budgets they could not afford after "free upgrades".

	 Considering the licensing and marketing efforts of computer companies
	since computers have been sold, this is a throwback in what way?

	 Mike "been dealing with too many maint contracts lately" Loseke