An Unlikely Champion
 

Open-source geeks are devout in their belief that software should be free to all, and hold as their icon the Linux alternative to the Microsoft commercial empire. As unpaid volunteers who collaborate to develop open source code, they tend to be anti-corporate types. So they watched with some trepidation as a capitalist giant, IBM, began pouring money into Linux, capped by a $1 billion investment in 2001. Yet in the past year, the corporation known as Big Blue has seen its reputation in the global open-source community shift from suspect sugar daddy to knight in shining armor.

I'm not sure I'd agree that they are an unlikely champion, but they are making great strides in the open source arena, complementing their domination in the processing market (excluding the consumer-level PC area). This article pointed out, however, that despite it costing more than settling, IBM fought to defend the rights of Linux, showing that an ever-increasing force in the industry at least has some morals. Read more here.