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IBM Closes Acquisition of Red Hat for $34B

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Re: IBM Closes Acquisition of Red Hat for $34B

#11

Feel sad, I know it's just the way things go in big business, but watching a prime example of a fiscally successful company built on open source who has committed so many resources to kernel development and making the Linux community better get bought by a beached whale like IBM just shakes me.

I mean, Red Hat has 12,000 employees already (granted IBM has 200K - edit 350K, see reply). Red Hat is not a small start-up.

Re: IBM Closes Acquisition of Red Hat for $34B

#13

Feel sad, I know it's just the way things go in big business, but watching a prime example of a fiscally successful company built on open source who has committed so many resources to kernel development and making the Linux community better get bought by a beached whale like IBM just shakes me.

Yes, I am shocked too.

Who will be developing the lion share of what makes "the Linux desktop?"

If IBM wants to ever make money of this deal, the only way available for them is to kick everybody, but support people, and crank up fees to the max from big corporate clients.

Ubuntu has certainly stole the crown of "the server linux" as being built on a more sound foundation, and being more conservative in bringing disruptive novelties — something that just any sysadmin likes.

Re: IBM Closes Acquisition of Red Hat for $34B

#15

Feel sad, I know it's just the way things go in big business, but watching a prime example of a fiscally successful company built on open source who has committed so many resources to kernel development and making the Linux community better get bought by a beached whale like IBM just shakes me.

I have no specific bad feelings about IBM, but I don't like the constant drive towards consolidation.

It makes us worse off, I feel. Nearly all these big mergers are about cornering markets, reducing competition and avoiding innovations. At best they're about finance shenanigans.

It's not as if redhat customers are likely to be excited about this.

Re: IBM Closes Acquisition of Red Hat for $34B

#16

Does this acquisition open up the market for a Linux company to move into the Linux enterprise space? Maybe Ubuntu could pivot into this space.

I think the market is probably there regardless. It's not necessarily an easy market, but it's a class of service that fulfills needs and I think demand will be there if you identify and solve the right problems.

Enterprise is hard though, for total outsiders.

Re: IBM Closes Acquisition of Red Hat for $34B

#17

Feel sad, I know it's just the way things go in big business, but watching a prime example of a fiscally successful company built on open source who has committed so many resources to kernel development and making the Linux community better get bought by a beached whale like IBM just shakes me.

I run Red Hat's Developer program, our developer tools portfolio and our developer relations team. When I first heard the news I had a similar reaction. But I've worked with IBM'ers in open source projects for years and they've always been great contributors. Perhaps more importantly both IBM and Red Hat are very committed to not changing our open culture and open source development model. That's been the source of our growth and why IBM felt we were worth 34B. Ultimately words are cheap, so if you see Red Hat's actions in the open source community changing please say something - I for one am committed to continuing to work the open source way.

You can read my blog post and comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20391504

Re: IBM Closes Acquisition of Red Hat for $34B

#18

Feel sad, I know it's just the way things go in big business, but watching a prime example of a fiscally successful company built on open source who has committed so many resources to kernel development and making the Linux community better get bought by a beached whale like IBM just shakes me.

At least it wasn't Oracle?

All companies will end up sucking in the end, because they're all in it for the money, and you can always make a little more money acting unscrupulously. Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Google - they're all essentially one company, at heart.

---

I like the Walrus best," said Alice, "because you see he was a little sorry for the poor oysters."

"He ate more than the Carpenter, though," said Tweedledee. "You see he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn't count how many he took: contrariwise."

"That was mean!" Alice said indignantly. "Then I like the Carpenter best—if he didn't eat so many as the Walrus."

"But he ate as many as he could get," said Tweedledum.

This was a puzzler. After a pause, Alice began, "Well! They were both very unpleasant characters—

Re: IBM Closes Acquisition of Red Hat for $34B

#19

Share price was $187.71 prior to the announcement. As posted in the article - $190/share agreed purchase.

And to give even more context, it was $170.00 back in Oct 29 when it was first announced. Thus, if you bought then and sold now, you'd have a 11.7% return in 8 months. The S&P index would've returned 12% in comparison.

Not risk-free by any means, but almost certainly less risk than buying the S&P index during that time period. There was a reason Warren Buffett parked a ton of cash into Red Hat stock after it was bought.

Re: IBM Closes Acquisition of Red Hat for $34B

#20
post #13

Feel sad, I know it's just the way things go in big business, but watching a prime example of a fiscally successful company built on open source who has committed so many resources to kernel development and making the Linux community better get bought by a beached whale like IBM just shakes me.

Yes, I am shocked too. Who will be developing the lion share of what makes "the Linux desktop?" If IBM wants to ever make money of this deal, the only way available for them is to kick everybody, but support people, and crank up fees to the max from big corporate clients. Ubuntu has certainly stole the crown of "the server linux" as being built on a more sound foundation, and being more conservative in bringing disru…

Red Hat's commitments to the open source projects it works on from linux, to kubernetes, to java, and many others will remain unchanged.
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