Sun and IBM have found innovative ways to ride the decentralized wave. IBM saw that Linux—the open-source operating system that rivals Microsoft Windows—was gaining traction. Instead of competing with the decentralized market entrants, IBM supported them. It deployed six hundred engineers whose sole job was to contribute to Linux, and it actively supported the development of Apache and Firefox, the open-source browser that competes with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. IBM’s strategy was based in part on the “whoever is my enemy’s enemy is my friend” philosophy. That is, “if these programs are
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