Scott Handy, Director, Linux Solutions Marketing, IBM Software Group Click picture for a larger image.

IBM is excited about Linux, and the company is proud to make that excitement known through their "Peace, Love, and Linux" campaign. They're calling it a rallying cry of their support for the open source operating system. To learn more about what IBM is doing with Linux and how Lotus fits into the picture, Associate Technical Editor Theodore Durst spoke with Scott Handy, Director of Linux Solutions Marketing for IBM.

TD: "Peace, Love, and Linux" represents a major commitment to Linux from IBM. A lot of people are scratching their heads and saying, "IBM of all companies?" Do you see the Linux OS as separate from the open source culture? Is Linux growing up, or is it turning into corporate Linux now?

SH: Linux is one example of an open source project that has been very successful. There are a lot of good open source projects that we are supportive of, and Linux is just one of them. Now, we don't see open source as necessarily the answer for all projects. We have no intention of open-sourcing DB2 or Lotus Domino or any of those. So, it just depends. We actually see a very good balance between the commercial licensed software and the open source software, and so does the open source community. So, I was more pleased than you'd ever imagine back at LinuxWorld when the small business suite for Linux won best of show. Not just because it's a great product and won best of show, but because a commercial licensed piece of software won best of show in an open source world.

TD: It kind of ran against the grain.

SH: It made me realize that it's not bad to be commercial. They don't mind--nobody minds. In fact, they were all happy when Red Hat turned a profit this quarter. They want to see these guys make money. So, making money is not necessarily bad. Some of the tactics, with control points, that some of the other people have used to make money are not considered good. The great thing about Linux is that nobody's got a control point and nobody can have one. And so we don't feel bad about promoting it loudly because it's not like we are trying to get control of it, because you can't.