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IBM acquires Red Hat

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Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#91

Post by unethical_ban »

rodgerd wrote: post #83
Kye wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu looked like it was taking over last time I paid attention. Every new cloud thing touted its pre-configured Ubuntu images, for example. Even Microsoft started with Ubuntu with WSL. Maybe that's why a still multi-billion dollar company decided to cash out even as Linux seems to be making inroads. People used Red Hat for the same reason they used IBM: it was corporate, understood corporate needs, and knew how to…

> Ubuntu looked like it was taking over last time I paid attention. Ubuntu don't have JBoss or OpenShift, amongst other things. Neither do SuSE, unfortunately.

Ubuntu has its own orchestration toolsets, and I wonder if RHAT only had the upper hand with being the incumbent in the US and buying things like Ansible and OpenShift and CoreOS.

Ubuntu runs Systemd, it's a modern distro - if someone wants to take Openshift core and other components and run it on Ubuntu, it will happen.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#92

Post by wging »

majewsky wrote: post #78

Good thing we're using CoreOS instead of Red Hat. /me looks at the CoreOS article on Wikipedia Fuck.

relevant line:

> The CoreOS corporation was purchased by Red Hat in January 2018 for a purchase price of $250 million.[71]

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#93

Post by ISL »

abrowne wrote: post #87
pinewurst wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now official! It's at $190/share vs Friday's $116.68 close https://www.redhat.com

https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/ibm-acquire-r... "- IBM to maintain Red Hat’s open source innovation legacy, scaling its vast technology portfolio and empowering its widespread developer community - Red Hat to operate as a distinct unit within IBM’s Hybrid Cloud team"

Do truth-in-advertising laws apply if IBM were to change course from a stated goal?

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#94

Post by pmoriarty »

pinewurst wrote: post #3

Hoping this is false! IBM is the worst of acquirers and they treat their people like utter garbage, especially the more experienced ones. If there's any truth to this, it means those in charge have basically given up - assuming growth is capped and/or that the big return of a buyout premium would counter recent stock pricing setbacks. (Update: now officially announced!)

I've really got to wonder at the people who would stay at a company that treated them like utter garbage ... especially if they're experienced ... and especially in this job market.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#95

Post by adventured »

redwood wrote: post #66

The real story here is that cloud is killing them both.

Where do you see any of that represented in Red Hat's business performance? Their growth has been strong the last five years and shows no sign of high stress or decline being imminent. They're tracking to solidly double their sales over four years from the end of fiscal 2015.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#96

Post by csours »

greglindahl wrote: post #70
pinewurst wrote: post #3

Hoping this is false! IBM is the worst of acquirers and they treat their people like utter garbage, especially the more experienced ones. If there's any truth to this, it means those in charge have basically given up - assuming growth is capped and/or that the big return of a buyout premium would counter recent stock pricing setbacks. (Update: now officially announced!)

My last startup, blekko, was acquired by IBM in 2015. They treated our people well; many of them still work there. It takes 6 months to be acquired by IBM, so I don't think recent stock market gyrations have anything to do with it.

My perception is that IBM (and HP, Oracle, etc) will buy a product company, and then IBM-ify it, and then just sit on that product for years with minimal improvements.

That is my fear for Red Hat. Successful product companies are hungry - IBM is not.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#97

Post by andrewstuart2 »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #31

There cannot be a single Red Hat employee outside of RH's board of directors that thinks this would be a good move for Red Hat.

As a Red Hat employee (opinions my own, not Red Hat's, etc) and though not involved in any discussions like this, I can see some potential for it being a good move. There's a lot of work being done to a) move things from mainframe to distributed and b) help people squeeze the last bits of utility out of their mainframes. That requires knowledge on both sides of the house.

The world is going to open-source distributed systems built on commodity hardware, which Red Hat has done a great job of building a business model around. For old established companies, though, the migration is a lot of work, and there are _definitely_ still plenty of large companies who have purchased/leased mainframes for long periods of time, and would like to modernize, but also can't afford to throw everything away and rebuild from scratch. There's a lot of work being done already between the two companies to run Go, Docker, Kubernetes, etc, on mainframe, and for companies with mainframe resources, being able to get a little more utility out of those sunk costs is very attractive, and something Red Hat's expertise has (and would continue to, presumably) help accomplish.

That being said, I'm pretty surprised at the news, and I'll be watching closely to see how things go.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#99

Post by ATsch »

abrowne wrote: post #87
pinewurst wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now official! It's at $190/share vs Friday's $116.68 close https://www.redhat.com

https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/ibm-acquire-r... "- IBM to maintain Red Hat’s open source innovation legacy, scaling its vast technology portfolio and empowering its widespread developer community - Red Hat to operate as a distinct unit within IBM’s Hybrid Cloud team"

>Red Hat to operate as a distinct unit within IBM’s Hybrid Cloud team

I read this as "everything aside from the cloud stuff will be gutted"?

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#100

Post by nilsocket »

It Red hat and later canonical were bought by some companies.

This is going to be a big setback to open-source software as both compaines contribute a lot to Linux distroes.

Smaller companies will find it hard to rely or choose a distribution.

If IBM acquires Red hat, I hope they leave it alone.

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