IBM Announces Deal To Acquire Red Hat At $34 Billion

[cb88]

Redhat is where systemd and alot of GTK garbage comes from ... maybe this will kill it. Sad to see this happening to such an otherwise important company though.

[Michael]

Article updated, deal announced.

[microcode]

This will be interesting.

I didn't have such feeling until I read your post. Why do you feel bad about the purchase?

In my experience, some parts of IBM are immensely incompetent, insular, and stuck in the 19th century. I hope they do not have the effect of foisting that upon RH, but I'm not holding my breath.

[schmidtbag]

Sure is a lot of pessimism around here. It seems a lot of people here are forgetting that IBM is one of the major contributors to the Linux kernel... I don't recall them ever causing any major problems in the past.
If this was Microsoft who bought RH, then we'd have something to fear.

[TemplarGR]

Redhat is where systemd and alot of GTK garbage comes from ... maybe this will kill it. Sad to see this happening to such an otherwise important company though.

Aside of you trolling, why do you want those projects killed. It is opensource, you don't have to use them, just use the garbage you are used to...

[TemplarGR]

This will be interesting.



I didn't have such feeling until I read your post. Why do you feel bad about the purchase?

It's IBM. They are incompetent.

[Dawn]

Red Hat currently employs around 12,000 people and is the second largest contributor to the Linux kernel. Of course, IBM used to be in the operating system game itself with OS/2 while in the past number of years they have pretty much been a Linux shop for their enterprise servers on both z Systems and POWER9.

IBM supports Linux on both Power and z, but the dominant operating system on z is still very much z/OS - and as far as I know, AIX still accounts for the large majority of Power revenue as well, especially beyond the low end. IBM also actively develops several other operating systems - VSE, VM, TPF, and iSeries.

According to this survey, only 32% of z sites reported running z/Linux at all, and none had it as their primary operating system.

https://www.arcati.com/newyearbook18/18part2.pdf

[cb88]

Aside of you trolling, why do you want those projects killed. It is opensource, you don't have to use them, just use the garbage you are used to...

GTK is one giant hack and assumes it's users are morons. systemd applies similar philosophy to the init system while also being fascist about it.

[wizard69]

Personally I see huge potential for good here. For one it brings a positive light to the world of open source. This is big big news and that is good for open source.

Will there be challenges, most certainly. I’m actually hoping to see IBM bring a focus on the future to Linux and the developer community. This should be driven by a forceful transition to modern developmental tools. More specifically ditch C for most non kernel development. Personally I’d like to see Swift be promoted to thelanguage of choice for GUI apps but Rust is another option. I say this in all seriousness as many of the gnome apps leave a lot to be desired when it comes to robustness.

The second thing I would expect from IBM is a focus on AI related technologies, especially working them into core features of Linux. You look at what is coming out of Google, Apple and MS, AI wise and you can see lots of room for improvement. We are a long ways from OS interaction like you see in science fiction. IBM on the other hand is one of the few companies that could start to work AI technologies into an OS. Everybody else seems to be focused on apps.



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I can't see this as any good, honestly. What positive effect will IBM have?

Well I pointed out two possibilities, AI and a transition to modern technologies. For the life of me I never understood Gnomes focus on C and JavaScript. Not exactly the technologies I would choose to engage a wide range of developers.

Is there any benefit at all to IBM buying out the largest open source company, I mean... at all?

Well it answers the question about FOSS being compatible with business.

On a a more serious side IBM has been involved in many open source projects of late. We have Eclipse that one day might be usable. They have worked really hard with the community to drastically improve Swift, it’s direction and capabilities. In reality they are now a Linux based shop and use it on many platforms.

As as far as open source they are a far different company today than 30 or 40 years ago.

I'm old enough that I remember big blue was the Microsoft of its day, shady practices included.

So? Really you can’t judge a company on practices that happened decades ago. Especially when some of the leadership from back then has kicked the bucket. Leadership is key here, just look at what happened at MS with a leadership change.

Now that was a while ago, but I'm more inclined to think that the opportunity to be shady was diminished rather than the reason to do so. IBM has reams of dirty history.

So do other companies. You need to realize that companies are run by individuals, the companies themselves are not dirty. I say this in all seriousness because I work for a company that had some real shady characters at the helm. They take over and frankly frustrate the living hell out of the rank and file. That doesn’t mean that the employees and their values have changed it just means the guy upstairs is a jackass.

IBM today is a very different services oriented company, I actually see RedHat as a good fit.

Well, nothing anyone can do about it, just have to hope that things work out.

It isn’t a big deal, I’m not sure where all the instant hand wringing is coming from. There are literally dozens of Linux distro s out there, IBM can’t screw things upto much before they loose community acceptance. Personally I’m hoping for a much better Fedora coming out of this.

[Templar82]

I would trust IBM more than most tech companies, interesting to see where they go with this.
But it's possible they don't change all that much at all.