[1] : Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002)

ibm
     international business machines manufacturer, ibm
     
     

[2] : Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001)

ibm /i-b-m/ once upon a time, the computer company most hackers loved
   to hate; today, the one they are most puzzled to find themselves liking.

   from hackerdom's beginnings in the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, ibm
   was regarded with active loathing. common expansions of the corporate
   name included: inferior but marketable; it's better manually; insidious
   black magic; it's been malfunctioning; incontinent bowel movement; and a
   near-infinite number of even less complimentary expansions see also
   fear and loathing. what galled hackers about most ibm machines above
   the pc level wasn't so much that they were underpowered and overpriced
   though that counted against them, but that the designs were incredibly
   archaic, crufty, and elephantine ... and you couldn't _fix_ them --
   source code was locked up tight, and programming tools were expensive,
   hard to find, and bletcherous to use once you had found them.

   we didn't know how good we had it back then. in the 1990s, microsoft
   became more noxious and omnipresent than ibm had ever been. then, in the
   1980s ibm had its own troubles with microsoft and lost its strategic
   way, receding from the hacker community's view.

   in the late 1990s ibm re-invented itself as a services company, began
   to release open-source software through its alphaworks group, and began
   shipping linux systems and building ties to the linux community. to
   the astonishment of all parties, ibm emerged as a staunch friend of the
   hacker community and open source development.

   this lexicon includes a number of entries attributed to `ibm'; these
   derive from some rampantly unofficial jargon lists circulated within
   ibm's formerly beleaguered hacker underground.


see also:
infinite fear and loathing crufty elephantine linux open source 

[3] : The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)

ibm
     
        international business machines
     
     
see also:
international business machines 

Ibm >> I Words
Ibm, definition of term: Ibm
ibm_pag1.html

Ibm Pc >> I Words
Ibm Pc, definition of term: Ibm Pc
ibm+pc_pag1.html