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IBM acquires Red Hat

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Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#691

Post by qwerty456127 »

_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #686
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 s…

What if you would just publish your code on GitHub, would they seek to punish you?

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#692

Post by cyphar »

indigochill wrote: post #582
Conan_Kudo wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know of any other OSS company that does _exclusively_ OSS. Canonical, for example, has a number of proprietary solutions built around their core OSS stuff, so they function as an open core business. And they're not doing anywhere close to as well as Red Hat does.

SUSE? They make a big song and dance (literally) of being open source, but I don't know if they're exclusively OSS.

[I work for SUSE.]

Nowadays, yes. SUSE Studio was the main proprietary thing we had in recent memory, and it was sunlit a few years ago with KIWI being its successor.

As far as I know, everything we develop is free software. You can get the full sources for any package in SLES or openSUSE (which isn't really SUSE but SUSE engineers work a lot on openSUSE) using zypper.

Personally, not only is everything I work on free software, I also exclusively work upstream-first (and I maintain several upstream projects like runc and some OCI projects). To be clear, this is not a company-wide thing -- many of my colleagues do not consistently contribute upstream -- but regardless all of our products' sources can be downloaded under free licenses. In fact you can get the sources from OBS (it's what openSUSE Leap is directly based on).

Now, there are some things that we distribute which are proprietary to certain customers (think flash or the NVIDIA drivers), but these are mostly because customers pay us to repackage other peoples proprietary code. We don't develop them. Personally I'd prefer if we didn't do this, but it is a very small part of our business.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#693

Post by qwerty456127 »

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?

> if IBM decided that they had copyright on your contributions to Cygwin.

How could they decide this if you'd have written the code on a weekend?

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#695

Post by mohammedbin »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #690
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...

Why wouldn't you use WSL?

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#696

Post by p1necone »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #693
p1necone wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> if IBM decided that they had copyright on your contributions to Cygwin. How could they decide this if you'd have written the code on a weekend?

Many employers have clauses about owning any IP you produce while employed there, regardless of whether or not it involved company time or property. Whether said clauses are actually enforceable varies from location to location.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#697

Post by monch1962 »

ethbro wrote: post #423
SwellJoe wrote: post #394

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…

On acquisitions, I can offer the anecdote of a friend working at a startup IBM purchased. Things started with "IBM loves you, and pledges to stay hands off and help you do what you're already doing", continued to "We're going to replace a few management positions with folks from IBM" and "We're changing some benefits, titles, and procedures to better align with The IBM Way", and finally ended up with "You aren't meet…

That lines up very closely with the experience of some friends who sold their (growing rapidly, highly profitable) startup to IBM.

It took a few months for them to realise their startup was going to languish completely within IBM, and their destiny for the 2 years after acquisition was to sit by quietly and wait for their payout, while looking for the next thing to do.

Any time & effort they put into trying to grow their startup product's future within IBM was going to be a waste of everyone's time. This was a hard lesson for them to learn post-acquisition, but I think the money in their bank accounts 2 years down the track will help them get over it

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#699

Post by cyphar »

cmurf wrote: post #304
bloopernova wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share the sentiment. Gawd. Freaking. Dammit. I've been using RHEL-derived systems for like almost 20 years. This actually feels like a betrayal of the Open Source community. Any bets on whether Fedora and CentOS will exist in November 2019?

The boilerplate and vague statement of Red Hat remaining a distinct unit doesn't really tell us anything. More relevant is what the CentOS and Fedora communities think of this acquisition, because no matter what they are community driven projects. There are two coins to toss: whether IBM reaches into Red Hat in a way that kills off either project; and whether enough of the community steps out. I'm curious what openSU…

Regarding openSUSE (I work for SUSE so obviously don't speak for the wider openSUSE community, just my 2¢ as a contributor):

While people do have a reasonable level of hostility over the Novell acquisition (which has left some deep cultural scar tissue within SUSE), they did give us openSUSE.

Overall there is often worry when we have an acquisition (since a very large portion of openSUSE maintainers are employed by SUSE). With EQT quite a few folks were worried about how separated the finances were between openSUSE and SUSE and I believe Richard Brown commented on how exactly he's pushing for better financial and trademark separation (the only two things that they really share anymore).

So while people do get worried every one in a while, I get the impression that overall things are going okay despite the series of acquisitions in recent years.

However, Fedora/RedHat have a different structure and relationship and I wouldn't use the openSUSE/SUSE model to predict how things will work out.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#700

Post by jcriddle4 »

diminoten wrote: post #324
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.

How long have you been in the industry? As far as I understand, that's a pretty standard pitch, though maybe IBM emphasizes it more. Do you feel like your company shouldn't make money off the work you do for them? I'm confused by your tone...

Some companies are better then others. I am confused about why you would ask a question that is intellectually equivalent of "... have you stopped beating your wife.." /S
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