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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

#51

Post by knd775 »

bmicklea wrote: post #32
yitchelle wrote: post #14

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.

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...

This seems like wishful thinking. These are exactly the same things that are always said. You may be fine for a few weeks, a few months, or even a few years, but IBM will inevitably interfere enough to cause a serious culture shift (or collapse).

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

#53

Post by rusticpenn »

ilovecaching wrote: post #35
voidfunc wrote: post #27

This is a great move for both companies. The doom and gloom in this thread is depressing. RedHat gets access to IBMs massive sales machine and IBM picks up a number of key technologies. Win-win.

People are horrified because IBM is a sinking ship and a monolithic big business that will attempt to look at everything from a fiscal perspective with no real love for what made Redhat great. Is IBM really going to give Systemd, Fedora, the full time kernel maintainers a break and pay them to make “unprofitable” software? We’re also seeing the end of independence that was making the open source model work with digni…

IBM spends so much on R&D. I am not sure if the company is solely focussed on short term profits.

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

#54

Post by abvr »

ilovecaching wrote: post #6

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.

That I feel is just hyperbole, too many people tend to think this deal is some kid of death warrant to Red Hat, but in reality it is only going to strengthen it by adding more and providing support, both financial and managerial to any dearth of resources that may come around ope source companies, that is if IBM can keep their hands out of the technology and management of Red Hat. I think and hope they will be wise about handling things and learn from companies like Oracle who are now infamous for obliterating good technology.

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

#55

Post by Frost1x »

dalbasal wrote: post #15
ilovecaching wrote: post #6

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.

I agree. I think there's enough evidence at this point in time to show that corporate consolidation after a point is no longer beneficial to our society.

After a certain point, it's pretty clear to me that consolidation only benefits a few significantly invested shareholders and no one else. I suspect this is somewhere greater than the "big 4-5" we've become accustomed to accepting in every sector, when economies of scale stop showing significant sizable benefits to consumers and the market at large. Instead, it turns into pure financial strategy to maximize the few most significant investors' ROI which becomes significantly disproportionate to their contribution to society.

Antitrust cases are quite slow to react to these circumstances, be it intentional (financial influence in government) and or structural (government intentionally moves slowly).

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

#56

Post by rwmj »

jbob2000 wrote: post #21
bmicklea wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Open source doesn't make money, you're at IBM now to save their failing cloud business. If you can't do that, expect your time on open source to dry up.

Open source absolutely does make Red Hat money, billions of dollars a year.

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

#57

Post by testvox »

jaboutboul wrote: post #26
jake_morrison wrote: post #23

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.

https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel

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

#58

Post by TallGuyShort »

bmicklea wrote: post #32
yitchelle wrote: post #14

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.

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...

I remember a very similar email from my company's CEO during a merger. Within months he had retired with millions and everything had changed. I sincerely wish Red Hat and your work doesn't fall victim to a similar fate, but IBM literally owns you as of today.

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

#59

Post by DocTomoe »

bmicklea wrote: post #32
yitchelle wrote: post #14

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.

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.

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

#60

Post by airstrike »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #58
bmicklea wrote: post #32

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...

I remember a very similar email from my company's CEO during a merger. Within months he had retired with millions and everything had changed. I sincerely wish Red Hat and your work doesn't fall victim to a similar fate, but IBM literally owns you as of today.

That sort of depends on whether the CEO will remain in the company or not, and which incentives he has to continue to perform
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