Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

IBM acquires Red Hat

redhat.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

721–730 of 1001 posts

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#721

Post by qwerty456127 »

mohammedbin wrote: post #695
qwerty456127 wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why wouldn't you use WSL?

Perhaps you're right, maybe WSL can do all the job nicely so maybe there is little if any point in developing cygwin. I have never tried it to be honest. I just prefer Windows 7 and loosely-integrated solutions - a 3rd-party Linux in a box feels better than a Microsoft Linux in the Windows kernel (yet just using a VM doesn't feel great for performance reasons and beacuse of not rally seamless file system integration).

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#722

Post by stephenr »

I kind of wonder how many of the people here bemoaning this buyout, also buy into the vc model, where the ultimate 'goal' for most startups is a buyout by a bigger company.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#723

Post by techntoke »

_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #682
techntoke wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Yes it really is. There are some people internally that use Fedora, but even they are becoming more rare. Canonical on the otherhand requires their employees use their distro.

I personally run Arch and haven't had issues on any hardware that I've tested, and it has the benefit of staying current with the latest stable kernel and software, so it doesn't have to backport fixes and features.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#724

Post by siddboots »

tootie wrote: post #709
siddboots wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and yet there is no shortage of examples of ownership being consistently more concentrated over time. Are we are right around the corner from seeing "upstarts" in the television, telecoms, and food manufacturing industries?

Seriously? TV has been totally disrupted by streaming services. Music too. Some industries simply morph into utilities and get stuck in that space forever. Telecom will land there eventually.

I don't think that entirely speaks to my point. You were speaking of a natural cycle of conglomeration and entrepreneurship, yet there are many examples of markets that have only become more of an oligopoly over time. It seems to me that centralised ownership generally makes it harder for entrepreneurs to break into a market.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#725

Post by SwellJoe »

mcguire wrote: post #541
SwellJoe wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds about right. And, I suspect it'll happen to Red Hat, too, despite the fact that Red Hat is a money printing machine. They've been literally unbelievably effective at turning open source into profit (as someone who's tried to make money on building Open Source software for roughly 20 years, I find it difficult to comprehend how much money Red Hat makes). I've even occasionally considered applying at Red Ha…

If you compare Oracle and IBM, Oracle comes off as competent. Not in terms of technical ability; they are about equivalent. But for everything else, IBM is just a lame copy.

That seems far-fetched, to me. Oracle is very focused on being evil and making a lot of money. IBM is ambivalent about being evil.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#726

Post by thatcloudguy »

solarkraft wrote: post #645
Stratoscope wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know about any other company that is large, successful, focuses on the enterprise and absolutely behind OSS. Doesnt Microsoft tick all those boxes? Even if they aren't exclusively an open source company, they are "absolutely behind OSS" if you go by how much open source code they have contributed.

Meh. They have a bad reputation due to calling open word source software cancer the new windows business model. Also, while their engineers are certainly smart, their software seems very crusty (the down side of infinite backwards compatibility) and usually doesn't play well at all with existing open source software. Thus: Mostly useless.

The early 2000s called and would like their objection back. Microsoft isn't that same company any more and haven't been for a long time. Sure, some of their technology is pretty awful but they definitely changed their tune around OSS.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#727

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

techntoke wrote: post #723
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Yes it really is. There are some people internally that use Fedora, but even they are becoming more rare. Canonical on the otherhand requires their employees use their distro. I personally run Arch and haven't had issues on any hardware that I've tested, and it has the benefit of staying current with the latest stable kernel and software, so it doesn't have to backport fixes and features.

My understanding (via the Ubuntu podcast) is that Canonical allows people (outside of core desktop team) to use at least non-Ubuntu distros.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#728

Post by antod »

gregcoombe wrote: post #395
NovaX wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen RedHat (via JBoss) knowingly patent work they read in a research paper without referencing or funding them. I was positive it was for a reward, as there was no additionally novel ideas in their descriptions and similar work was already open sourced. I knew it wouldn't hold up so it didn't bother me as impacting my projects, but I was disappointed over the ethics of them doing that. I do wonder how many pate…

It's been my experience that engineers are quite poor at judging the "patentability" of ideas. I'm not saying that you're wrong, just that the patent field is quite opaque and difficult to understand, which is why patent lawyers do quite well.

You are completely right, but it does highlight the incongruity of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_having_ordinary_skill_i...

Based on the above phrase you could almost be forgiven for thinking somethings "patentability" would actually be defined by how engineers typically judged it, rather than how specialist lawyers judge it.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#729

Post by thatcloudguy »

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.

Lovely idea that won't be possible. All that brilliance and inspiring leadership from Red Hat will be overwhelmed by the tsunami if indifference that is IBM corporate culture. On the plus side, if you're looking to hire real OSS talent for your team, I suspect a bunch of Red Hat folks will be on the market as soon as their contractual lockups expire.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#730

Post by [deleted] »

KaiserPro wrote: post #238

So, I have mixed feelings. I don't think in the short term this will be a problem. However IBM has lost it's way. its a very large unwieldy organisation that doesn't change very fast. It also has an awful lot of lifers, who would flounder horribly outside the soft warm IBM shell. But, there are some brilliant engineers and technologies that are inside IBM. The ones I know are about are to do with GPFS, which is a shi…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN