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IBM acquires Red Hat

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Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#521

Post by jbfr »

kache_ wrote: post #183

New IBM hire, software developer. So far; I've taken part of 3 separate events where I was essentially sat through a presentation on why I should file patents (so they could farm IP off of me and my peers). IBM is a pathological company, and definitely not good news for open source.

Hi there! Fellow IBMer :) sorry to hear about your experience so far, just wanted to chime in and say that you're definitely not alone with this perspective. Patents at IBM are so highly valued that they often act as a blinder towards open source.

However, there are definitely groups inside of IBM that choose to open source their work instead of filing for patents. For example, the team that I'm currently on works on the Carbon Design System [0], which is entirely open source. All the work our team does is out in the open too [1][2], which is great!

I would say that for teams like this, the tendency is to open source software and patent processes that are unique to IBM or a particular domain. That way we can try and contribute back as much useful technology as we can!

Obviously there are others at the company who might have a different perspective, but thankfully we're also trying to spread our own take on alternatives to the traditional processes at IBM.

Hope this info can help make your time at IBM a little bit better!

[0]: https://www.carbondesignsystem.com/ [1]: https://github.com/carbon-design-system [2]: https://github.com/IBM?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=carbon&type=&languag...

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#522

Post by z3t4 »

kartan wrote: post #170

IBM has been historically a Linux contributor. Eclipse, their open source IDE, opened the other to Java and other programming languages in the OS. And Power processors supported Linux early on. From that perspective to purchase Red Hat makes sense. It makes even more sense as the announcement states that they are trying to create a bigger cloud provider to compete with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft…

What is a better business model then taking something that is free, and renting it at a premium ...

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#523

Post by theparanoid »

blihp wrote: post #428
kache_ wrote: post #183

New IBM hire, software developer. So far; I've taken part of 3 separate events where I was essentially sat through a presentation on why I should file patents (so they could farm IP off of me and my peers). IBM is a pathological company, and definitely not good news for open source.

Unfortunately, that's going to be the situation at virtually every large tech company these days. To their credit, IBM has been a longtime contributor to Linux so if Red Hat was going to be acquired, IBM is far from a worst-case scenario. It just would have been nice if they could have remained a stand-alone company (I know, wishful thinking)

It's not wishful thinking. RedHat could have remained standalone.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#526

Post by RandomTisk »

awill wrote: post #235
solatic wrote: post #153

It's like Vader asked Luke to join him in defeating the Emperor (Microsoft) and ruling the galaxy as father and son - and instead of the audience hearing "I'll never join you!!", we hear "sure, let's team up." The cognitive dissonance is so strong here. WTF just happened? If you asked me a month ago to put down serious money in Vegas on this never happening, I'd have happily done so. What on Earth were they thinking?…

This announcement made me really sad. Red Hat was a company I admired. I guess the only silver lining is that the buyer wasn't Oracle.

Ditto, I can almost guarantee I'll be in a meeting in the week or two where my directors will want to discuss the possibility of moving off of Redhat, at least as a contingency plan.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#527

Post by xorcist »

prepend wrote: post #392
cosinetau wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you're right, which is why I'm surprised by the seemingly negative response to this news, and the overwhelmingly positive response from GitHub+Microsoft. Some of the same conflicts of interest exist in both modern cases, notwithstanding, both have opposite contribution histories. Am I missing something?

Others pointed out that the Github merger wasn’t all positive, but Microsoft is at least a software company. IBM is a consulting company and their model is really different than RedHat. Competing with AWS and Microsoft is pretty crazy and does not make sense to me. RedHat’s value is in its software, not its cloud delivery. And, frankly, I depend a little more on centos/fedora than I do Github.

It may be strictly wrong to call them a "cloud" provider, but they've bet big on on-premise cloud-like systems, which carries a lot of potential for future growth.

If you want enterpricey Kubernetes, scratching those auditing and authorization itches it carries, Openshift is probably on your short list.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#528

Post by Operyl »

jarym wrote: post #54
mrkstu wrote: post #42

If IBM has one brain cell left, they'll pull a NeXT/Apple merger and let Red Hat executives start running the combined company. That is the one path to a real future for IBM instead of its slow decline into complete irrelevance.

RH are good at a LOT of things but sales remains a bit of a weak point compared to Oracle and to a lesser degree IBM. Hopefully the RH guys can bring back a focus on technology to IBM while IBM figure out how to sell it to customers. PS: so will it be called Blue Hat?

Ugh I hate their sales. There was a day they decided to spam my cell phone number constantly while I was on lunch. Not even sure how they got it, but I finally answered and got super angry with the other end. I didn’t even know it was Red Hat because they didn’t even bother leaving messages. Just back to back to back times 4 calls. Even if it were my work number, if you didn’t get through the first time, spamming my line isn’t going to get you there either.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#529

Post by erikb »

adventured wrote: post #95
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.

I think when you figure out why Amazon is currently losing to Microsoft you will also understand why Red Hat, just like Docker, was completely crushed by Google, and why IBM, despite trying super hard, wasn't even a player until now.
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