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IBM acquires Red Hat

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Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#492
post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about SAP? Aren't they a European company where software patents have no legal force? Do they fill patents for the US too?

It's not entirely true that in Europe that software patents don't exist. From: https://fsfe.org/campaigns/swpat/swpat.en.html "The European Patent Convention states that software is not patentable. But laws are always interpreted by courts, and in this case interpretations of the law differ. So the European Patents Office (EPO) grants software patents by declaring them as "computer implemented inventions". " There's…

Thanks for clarifying. While I kinda expected SAP to have some software patents, I didn't know that software patents or 'computer implemented inventions' were still a thing in Europe.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#493
post #358

Will this warrant an Our Incredible Journey [1] entry? Not technically an exit, I guess, at least not for most of the staff that start to work for Big Blue in a month. [1] https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

I figured bringing up that Tumblr will get flagged or at least downvoted, but it is amusing to ponder what would be the biggest, most high-profile acquisition in tech to merit an entry. Doubly funny when the firms involved aren't Silicon Valley startups but old enterprises.

I guess any publicly traded company is by definition at risk of being bought (or merged in this case) without notice or even much public speculation -- but this one feels particularly surprising as I'd been assuming much of Red Hat's value for its customers was its corporate-friendly support arrangements combined with its apparent independence from the traditionally-perceived excessively-corporate heavyweights.

The arguably customer-hostile licensing changes at Red Hat over the last few years are possibly an indicator of a shift in company culture.

On the other side, I've actually felt positively towards IBM since the 1990's when they started to commit heavily to a lot of free software efforts.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#494

HELP, I have a big question : The buyout will go to the shareholders, that is a deterministic ~30% net benefit. (the offer being ~30% > than the market cap) So WHY shouldn't us the readers of the news, buy shares right now, before the market react ? And we can even imagine a Web crawler software that detect that entreprise X announce to buy entreprise Y && the offer being > to the market cap, then auto buy ?

The market has already reacted. The bot strategy you describe is widely implemented. This is not an original idea.

Still the price stock hasn't gone uploads.disquscdn.com but this must be because we need to wait for tomorow opening. Are there any of thèses bots on github ? Why don't they work, are the market already fully saturated with those bots ?

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#495
post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it was just a joke, you know... but in fact I've checked and I'm already running upstart right now, as part of my Ubuntu LTS system. So really no need to "go back" :P

Last I checked Upstart was deprecated.

It is, but it's also the init system of some Ubuntu versions still supported, so you can be running upstart on a modern, supported distribution.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#496
post #234

IBM the company is like an iceberg. The R&D and open source contributions are the tip. And the other 90% is services revenue. And most people's experience with IBM services isn't positive.

I don't have any contacts with IBM business-wise, so my question might sound naive: Why 90% services revenue would be a problem? They have to fund these R&D and open source contributions somehow.

Presumably due to what GP says in the next sentence:

> And most people's experience with IBM services isn't positive.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#497
post #234

IBM the company is like an iceberg. The R&D and open source contributions are the tip. And the other 90% is services revenue. And most people's experience with IBM services isn't positive.

IBM is, as far a I can tell, the best example of a "mixed bag" in tech. I have heard both great and terrible things about IBM from customers, employees, developers on Open Source projects, etc. They are a huge organization, and one that seems more divided than many. It may be more useful to view IBM as a collection of fiefdoms rather than a single, focused, entity. Yes, the money all goes into one pot at the end of t…

We used to be a huge SoftLayer customer. Then they got bought by IBM and service/pricing/network/everything got worse. Then we left.

IBM sucks.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#498

HELP, I have a big question : The buyout will go to the shareholders, that is a deterministic ~30% net benefit. (the offer being ~30% > than the market cap) So WHY shouldn't us the readers of the news, buy shares right now, before the market react ? And we can even imagine a Web crawler software that detect that entreprise X announce to buy entreprise Y && the offer being > to the market cap, then auto buy ?

It's already too late to buy "before the market reacts". This is public information now, so it will be priced into the market price once the stock market opens.

Yes but my question would be, not everyone will buy at market opening T+1, but more some hours after ? Is This still impossible because of bots ? Tomorow empiricism will answer me.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM is, as far a I can tell, the best example of a "mixed bag" in tech. I have heard both great and terrible things about IBM from customers, employees, developers on Open Source projects, etc. They are a huge organization, and one that seems more divided than many. It may be more useful to view IBM as a collection of fiefdoms rather than a single, focused, entity. Yes, the money all goes into one pot at the end of t…

We used to be a huge SoftLayer customer. Then they got bought by IBM and service/pricing/network/everything got worse. Then we left. IBM sucks.

Yeah, we moved out of SoftLayer soon after that acquisition, as well. They just weren't as interested in the kind of (small) money we spend and it showed.
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