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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

#271

One can only hope IBM does not mismanage Red Hat. They will certainly twist workflow for their benefit. Owners will probably get a well deserved windfall.

We're all watching Microsoft with GitHub. . . it'll be interesting to see how the tech industry evolves over the next 5-10 years.

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

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"IP acquisition"? Honest, if all the code that RH writes is open source, how can this be an IP acquisition?

Well, there's probably some intimate knowledge of RH's customer base, their needs, their goals, etc., plus whatever processes RH uses to service them. It's not tech, but not all intellectual property is tech.

I think is what people might call "knowledge capital", "intellectual capital" or some such vague term.

In my experience IP corresponds specifically to legally recognised property in otherwise copyable information.

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

#273
It would be curious to see how Red Hat OpenShift works with parallel to IBM Cloud Private. Both offer same functionality to the customer and IBM invested so much amount revenue and time into IBM Cloud Private, so would they co-exist or merge into one offering is something worth a watch.

Openshift - https://www.openshift.com/

IBM Cloud Private - https://www.ibm.com/cloud/private

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

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably Ubuntu will be bought by Microsoft. With the cloud, especially containers, there is little future in a business that involves paying for operating systems licenses. Most interesting is probably supporting legacy versions of operating systems for customers who value compatibility to be able to continue to run existing applications with the minimum changes.

I sort of agree with this. Either Microsoft will purchase Ubuntu outright from Shuttleworth or they will just create Microsoft Linux, in whatever form that is, probably something more container focused than a general purpose OS.

I predict that Ubuntu, Hashicorp and/or Docker are acquired in the next year. I could see Microsoft acquiring any of them.

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

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 boug…

Is it less risky? Say a decent chunk of your portfolio in a single stock? And something weird happens during due diligence , not only is the acquisition over - the stock will bomb. Not sure how often acquisitions fall through after being announced, I assume very low. But still seems similar or higher risk then a stock fund.

I saw (felt) this happen.

Worked for Acxiom when they were to be bought by Silverlake. The stock shot up to near-sale-price levels, where I should have sold (but did not). The deal came unraveled, Acxiom stock dropped like a rock and the company had a reputation as 'damaged goods' for many years.

Lesson: There is a small upside, but a massive downside that can materialize.

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

#276

IBM now has control over systemd, and as other users here point out, also pulseaudio, dbus, gnome, wayland, and a significant share of kernel. IMHO this is a good time for the Debian project to reconsider the decision to rely on systemd. If you also think so, consider letting them know.

Aren't all those things GPL? Can they not be forked in the case of a sudden change of direction that Debian, or anyone else disagrees with? What do you mean by "control"?

redhat holds most of the expertise on those projects, so forking them, while possible, would be hard. Debian and Canonical would probably have an easier time developing something from their own expertise rather than relying on a 'once things get bad' fork.

Forks historically only really work if the fork comes from within.

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

#277

IBM basically has control of all of Linux now. They've gotta love that sweet, sweet strategic leverage over the entire Web and cloud ecosystem.

IBM also put in billions of dollars into Linux. They (along with many many others) are part of the reason Linux became commercially successful. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB976650399196757666

Not really. The IBM Academy reported that open source software was the single biggest threat to their business model, so they "invested" in Linux to keep their foot in the door. They've had mindshare at Apache and Redhat for almost 2 decades now. I don't think they'll make any money from that investment.

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

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red Hat's business model and open culture isn't changing. We will remain independent and I look at this as an opportunity for more people to engage with our stellar support and field teams. For some context you can read the email our CEO sent out to the whole company today: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/jim-whitehurst-email-red-hatt...

> Red Hat's business model and open culture isn't changing. The old management maxim will hold true: If nothing will change, why fuck with the formula? Of course Redhat under Big Blue will change, considerably.

Red Hat culture hasn't been anything to brag about. They basically maintain an outdated version of Linux that companies only pay for to get support and shift liability, but there is nothing innovative about Red Hat Linux.

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

#279
post #73
post #62

What does this mean for centOS?

I was going to say that CentOS is independent from RedHat, but then I realized I don't know what I'm talking about. From CentOS wikipedia page: > In January 2014, CentOS announced the official joining with Red Hat while staying independent from RHEL,[7] under a new CentOS governing board. So, good question!

After taking over they are now slow to ship new releases. It doesn't really make sense to use CentOS unless you may need to pay for RHEL support.

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

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM also put in billions of dollars into Linux. They (along with many many others) are part of the reason Linux became commercially successful. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB976650399196757666

Not really. The IBM Academy reported that open source software was the single biggest threat to their business model, so they "invested" in Linux to keep their foot in the door. They've had mindshare at Apache and Redhat for almost 2 decades now. I don't think they'll make any money from that investment.

IBM is a consulting company, and the open source business model is all about consulting, so I don't know what threat you're referring to. In any case, while you may use air quotes, they invested actual hard cash at a time when Linux was struggling to gain a foothold and was not considered a serious UNIX challenger. I'm not saying Linux owes them everything, but it sure does help when a giant company like IBM backs you.
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