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Author: Bruce Perens
Date:  
To: Simon Hobson
CC: dng
Subject: Re: [DNG] IBM Gives Away PowerPC; Goes Open Source
RISC-V is changing a lot of things. PowerPC doesn't have much value any
longer. IBM will be fine without it. I wouldn't capitalize ARM right now.

Disclaimer: Since I am part running a venture fund these days, SEC won't
let me say what I'm actually invested in to you lowly non-accredited
investors, but it might be a company on one side or the other of this
argument. Where the first amendment fits in this I am still unclear.

On Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 12:53 PM Simon Hobson <linux@???>
wrote:

> Didier Kryn <kryn@???> wrote:
>
> > Therefore it means IBM doesn't care anymore in PowerPc arch ... That's
> what I fear, actually.
>
> I don't think it means that. It's clear that PowerPC is stuck as a niche
> architecture. The only way out of that is to get lots of people using it -
> and making it freely available is one way towards that. You only need to
> look at a few examples to see that :
>
> USB vs FireWire. Firewire was very significantly better in many respects
> than USB, but it was expensive to implement because Apple were greedy over
> royalties. The inferior USB was really cheap to implement and took over.
>
> ARM. They licensed it widely for modest amounts, and it's been widely
> implemented instead of other architectures.
>
> For IBM, it could be a shrewd move to get more people using the platform,
> and thus boost it's popularity, and thus boost both the availability of
> hardware and choice of software to run on it. The Intel approach is to try
> and have all of the cake; this could be a move to make the cake much
> bigger, and thus make a slice of it bigger.
> IFF it works, they'll significantly expand the PowerPC market - and while
> they'll have a smaller share of it, they'll actually make more money.
>
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--
Bruce Perens - Partner, OSS.Capital.