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IBM acquires Red Hat

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Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#681

Post by johnvanommen »

hnzix wrote: post #621
simcop2387 wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, these are products to monetize and make money from.

Sure rationally the products should be a success, that's why IBM bought them. But GloboMegaCorps have a consistent record of acquiring great products then running them into the ground by smothering them with shitty internal policies. It seems like a fair % of SVers haven't had the pleasure of working for one of these Kafkaesque giants. They operate on dream logic and risk aversion.

Though I dedicated a few years of my life to OpenStack at HP, I sometimes wonder if OpenStack would be healthier if GloboMegaCorps didn't get involved.

In 2013, OpenStack felt like the "new Linux"

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#682

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

techntoke wrote: post #660
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #542

Maybe IBM can re-acquire ThinkPad from Lenovo too. Red Hat traditionally uses ThinkPads internally.

Red Hat employees traditionally use Macs and Windows PCs.

Is this really the case? I had always heard that part of the reason ThinkPads have such good Linux support is their use internally at Red Hat (who pushed the relevant code upstream).

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#683

Post by pinewurst »

jacques_chester wrote: post #404
pinewurst wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are strong rumors that IBM will be selling/spinning off its services group so perhaps that’s the funding justification?

If this kind of a split were happening it would be more accurate to describe it as the services group spinning off its product department.

That's an interesting thought, though Red Hat has a significant services group too, so they'd still have one afterward.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#684

Post by ajdlinux »

jbfr wrote: post #521
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…

I'm in the Linux Technology Centre - we've got an extremely strong open source culture over here.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#685

Post by zapita »

bpye wrote: post #613
zapita wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand your question, sorry. Can you explain what you mean?

I think the implication is that Canonical are in the same, shrinking market. Whilst I assume Ubuntu Server has a smaller market share (though I have no figured to back this up), are they not going to end up in the same spot where they can't really progress?

Well, Canonical was never a successful business in the first place. Red Hat on the other hand has revenue in the billions... which is huge! It’s just not growing fast enough to keep up with the competition from cloud providers and others. Canonical hasn’t even graduated to that sort of first-class problem (and I doubt they ever will).

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#686

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

jhallenworld wrote: post #614

When I worked for IBM (via acquisition), I wanted to fix bugs in Cygwin (owned by Red Hat). Red Hat does not accept patches unless you get permission from your current employer. I could not get anybody in IBM to sign Red Hat's permission slip. Nobody would sign because it's all risk, no reward from IBM's point of view.

I have the same problem in academia, being in a non-CS department, I'm required to notify the University's Center for Technology & Venture Commercialization about assigning my copyright over software to another entity (like the FSF), but so far I have been unsuccessful at getting them to sign the letter the FSF wants, despite the code I would be contributing being completely outside of my work at the University and so therefore theoretically outside of their purview. I suppose the moral is that all large organisations converge towards bureaucratic processes that waste the time of high$/hour employees and attempt to hinder all not immediately commercialisable progress.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#687

Post by LordDragonfang »

p1necone wrote: post #649
jhallenworld wrote: post #614

When I worked for IBM (via acquisition), I wanted to fix bugs in Cygwin (owned by Red Hat). Red Hat does not accept patches unless you get permission from your current employer. I could not get anybody in IBM to sign Red Hat's permission slip. Nobody would sign because it's all risk, no reward from IBM's point of view.

This actually seems like fair policy to me, think of the mess Red Hat would be in if IBM decided that they had copyright on your contributions to Cygwin. Or is my understanding of copyright law off base?

That's exactly why Red Hat had said permission slips. The ridiculous thing was that IBM refused to sign them

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#688

Post by pas »

sytse wrote: post #478
ethbro wrote: 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.

IBMs revenue comes from consulting but a lot of their profit comes from software https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-split-between-IT-and-consu... In their latest quarter https://www.ibm.com/investor/att/pdf/IBM-3Q18-Earnings-Chart... $4.1b of revenue came from Cognitive Solutions (mostly solutions software) at a 76% gross profit while their global business services with the same revenue had a gross profit of only 29.8…

Software income is because those fine consultants pushed the IBM Solution on unsuspecting customers.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#689

Post by throwaway5752 »

pinewurst wrote: post #73
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!)

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

52 week high is $177.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#690

Post by qwerty456127 »

jhallenworld wrote: post #614

When I worked for IBM (via acquisition), I wanted to fix bugs in Cygwin (owned by Red Hat). Red Hat does not accept patches unless you get permission from your current employer. I could not get anybody in IBM to sign Red Hat's permission slip. Nobody would sign because it's all risk, no reward from IBM's point of view.

I wish Cygwin would get more steam, a new package manager and a repository...
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