Over at his other job, our David Gewirtz suggests that, with the absorption of Sun into Oracle, open source badly needs an open source patron and that IBM should apply.

IBM has learned over the last two decades that it can succeed while avoiding the trips and dramas, the strum and drang, which pass the news cycles in the computer press. Sometimes no news is indeed good news, especially in computing, because it’s not about you but the customer.

But David has a point. All of open source benefited from having important projects in safe hands. With those projects no longer in safe hands a pall has settled, threatening to become a malaise.

IBM is in a unique position to fight that.