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IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says

reuters.com

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Re: IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says

#51

This seemed like an inevitability given the reliance on enterprise customers and the move to maximise the revenue from Terraform with the recent license change. They have made a round of layoffs, so at least some cost saving has already been done to make it more appealing for a sale. The main challenge from an acquisition like this will be maintaining the community around terraform providers, if that drops off, i'm n…

The Terraform providers, and the underlying library for building them, are still open source. This is why OpenTofu didn't have to fork them. Considering they're also used by Pulumi I don't see the provider community going away any time soon, but I definitely see them detaching themselves from Hashicorp.

Re: IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says

#52
post #38

IBM is like a juicer that takes out all the delicious flavor out of a fruit. Leaving nothing but a dried beetle husk.

Could say the same of many acquisitions. Cisco used to do the same thing. It is sad that ctrl labs got eaten by fb/meta. It used ML to sense your arm movements (and one employee figured out how to have a virtual 3rd arm). Collected by zuckerberg and disappeared. (and if it does come to something, you'll need to log in to use it)

Reminding me of that really cool Regina Dugan f8 video from like 2017 or so. They were working on a haptic communication system so you could read texts with your skin and stuff

Re: IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says

#55

Wasn't on my bingo card, that's for sure. Say what you will about big blue, they repeatedly seem to know who to acquire in order to buy themselves another 10 years of relevance.

Jumped on the Java boat alongside Sun and Oracle, pivoting from Smalltalk into Java, contributions to the Linux kernel since 2000's, collaborations with Apple and Sony, helped porting Go toolchain into their micro and mainframes, acquired Red-Hat thus indirect contributions to all major Linux projects that Red-Hat works on,...

Re: IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says

#56
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With what reasoning?

What's the value to society of having large companies get larger? IBM is clearly running on fumes by now. Extending its life by pulling down more small companies with them only makes things worse for everyone.

If society doesn't value what IBM produces then they'll go out of business. There are many factors to optimal organization size, and there are different ways of handling acquisitions that can preserve the acquired organization to varying extents. I work for an org that got acquired by IBM and my job (and org) has been remarkably unaffected. Just different folks enjoying the profits.

Like all things, there is much more nuance than "big corporation bad."

Re: IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says

#57
post #34
post #2

I know at least one person who left Red Hat for HashiCorp. I could imagine how they feel to be back(ish)

Been there (not Red Hat) it sucks.

IBM was sure good to someone I know. Some people might not appreciate a great job surrounded by brilliant inventors, even if the company has seem better days, but IBM taught them a lot (such as an absolute commitment to backwards compatibility and long-term support) early in their career and they will be forever grateful to them for those things.

Now, they have their own company and would never go back, but they still have respect for those who choose the steady paycheck, low-risk career, and great (actually pretty incredible) benefits.

Re: IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says

#58
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone want to guess who? I'll start: Jetbrains?

Still don't get why JetBrains hasn't been folded into the Alphabet family yet.

Probably were waiting to see how the company dealt with the sanctions on Russia first.

Re: IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says

#60
Mitchell, one of the co founders, left HashiCorp in December 2023 [1]

It’s either terrible timing (missed on more money?) or he knew about it and decided months in advance that it’s not worth the trouble of staying on (ie, look at the aftermath of the RedHat and IBM acquisition).

[1] https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/mitchell-reflects-as-he-depar...

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