IBM Closes Acquisition of Red Hat for $34B • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by oldpond » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 1:40 PM UTC

la_barba wrote: post #294

oldpond wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I should have said "When I was at IBM, the academy released a report, etc." No air quotes, required; I was there. I was on the open source community of practice core team at the time.

I still don't see your point or what you're disagreeing with. But anyway, thanks for your comment I guess. Have a nice day..

My point is that IBM didn't invest in open source to improve it, they invested to take advantage of it. Open source software was still frowned on since "free" was a dirty word in that culture. We never sold it in our deals. The explosion of innovation and creativity created by the open source community never reached IBM. We just kept selling Websphere and Domino. I think it was 2008 before CENTOS started creeping into our solutions. IBM did not buy Redhat because they believe in Linux. They did it to buy market share.

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

#302

Post by kortilla » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 12:58 AM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #170

kortilla wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is this evidence you are talking about? This acquisition has the potential of IBM using RH to disrupt the cancer of putting everything on AWS/GCE/Azure by pushing open source-based models. If there is one thing that’s obvious, it’s that people in this thread have very little imagination of the benefits of teamwork and conjoined efforts. The only thing this is evidence of is the shocking ignorance about business…

In the future, considering that it hasn't happened yet.

What are you talking about? GP said there is already “enough evidence”.

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

#303

Post by brianwawok » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

RickJWagner wrote: post #275

brianwawok wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doesn’t happen a ton but yah it sounds rough if it does.

Maybe similar risk profile to local government bonds. Common case you can a few %. If your town goes flint you take a big haircut.