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IBM acquires Red Hat

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Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#821

Post by [deleted] »

rincebrain wrote: post #711
solarkraft wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Amusingly, they're damned both ways at this point, since many of the Windows 10 complaints have, in fact, been breaks in backward compatibility.

[deleted]

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#822

Post by dragandj »

rodgerd wrote: post #631
dragandj wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because literally every conversation turns into a services upsell. I've migrated a site from WAS to JBoss. The support experience is night and day. WAS on IBM OS on IBM hardware not working? Pay a four-figure-per-day consult to be told that's just how WAS works on that platform, buy more hardware. Same application on JBoss, problems with performance, RH dropped experts in as part of the support contract. This is not…

As RedHat's software is open source, isn't it possible to buy the same services from other companies?

I was under the impression that OP objected to their revenue being 90% from services regardless, that's why I commented.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#823

Post by mcv »

emmelaich wrote: post #538
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?

Fedora and CentOS will both survive -- but maybe under a different name. This is possible because everything in Redhat/Fedora/Centos is open source. I'd be willing to bet numerous people are working on a non IBM/Redhat version of Centos.

That's the thing with an acquisition like this: what did IBM buy exactly? The code is open source, the people can leave and form a new company. The thing IBM really owns are Red Hat's contracts. But when those expire, the other party could sign their new contract with a company of former Red Hatters, if they want.

Buying an open source company only makes sense if you give the employees of that company exactly what they want. They are the real value.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#824

Post by avar »

bunderbunder wrote: post #648
jtl999 wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you just submit patches under a pseudonym?

I think that, if you were to ask open source maintainers, "What would you think of me committing fraud to get around your project's policies?" most of them would say, "Thanks, but no thanks."

You'd be surprised. I have first & second-hand experience with the maintainers of GNU projects just agreeing to accept patches on the sly and commit them as themselves with the consent of the submitter because the submitter can't be bothered to sign a copyright release form.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#825

Post by mynewtb »

tilt_error wrote: post #776
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Come to Sweden then :) As a researcher you explicitly own the rights to any foreground, i.e. results, as stated by law — the so called teacher’s excemption.

Careful, this might only apply to professors, not the rest of the staff.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#826

Post by shodan666 »

chongli wrote: post #712
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wait, so your university owns copyright on all your work by default?! That's a bummer if true. Outrageous, actually.

It is the same in the UK. You don't own any of the code made for university assignments.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#827

Post by billwear »

Honestly? I think IBM isn’t as relevant as they’d like to be, so they’re buying a Nike. They haven’t thought about the details, or worked out the long term. It could still go either way, but RH will chamge some over time. The real problem will probably be the perception, largely thanks to Oracle and it’s behavior with Sun. Does make you wonder if open source is a sustainable business model in the ultra-long-term.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#828

Post by zwischenzug »

shaklee3 wrote: post #568
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.

Is openshift really open source? I was under the impression that nobody really runs origin on its own since it's far too hard. It seemed more like they just wanted to point out but it's open source, but you need support and a lot of know-how to actually use it.

I help maintain a Chef recipe that installs both - it's quite feasible but not for the casual user.

https://github.com/IshentRas/cookbook-openshift3

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#829

Post by reacharavindh »

jabl wrote: post #809
verandaguy wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM is sliding into irrelevance in the mass market for sure, but they've still got a sizeable slice of the HPC/supercomputing market and their research in quantum computing is hard to overlook.

I work in HPC, and, well, it's VERY hard to make a good profit there. - Customers are stingy (think academic labs, supercomputer centers etc.), are not typically married to your solution architecture so for every purchase they will put out a tender that you have to bid for and win. - Performance is king, which means very expensive R&D, and customers don't spend much on all these "enterprise value-adds" that enterpris…

Same here. I'm a HPC admin. We carefully avoid vendor lock-in because it gets too expensive too easily.

Performance is king, and we don't buy into the kind of sales bullshit that IBM is famous for.

Sadly, we just standardised on CentOS 7 for our new cluster and I am nervous about its future considering IBM involvement now.

Re: IBM acquires Red Hat

#830

Post by [deleted] »

andy_ppp wrote: post #814
giis wrote: post #718

I went to IBM(India) interview sometime in 2011, after leaving GlusterFS (Red Hat). Interview went well, during final call with management. I was asked to stop working on Open Source during weekends or off-hours even though the IBM project and my Open Source work has nothing in common. I said, "I thought, IBM support Open Source right?" his response, "Yes, but that's another team" I decided to call-off the interview…

I can see Joel's points here and this is relevant to the discussion. It's probably the article he has written I disagree with the most as there is a simple way to deal with this; be very clear about the projects, code and designs the employee works on each month and sign them over as they are delivered. That way the employee's own work will be clear should there be any legal wrangling. This could be done by a status…

[deleted]
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