IBM is Buying Red Hat for 34 Billion USD

[SpecialEd]

IBM and Red Hat have inked the deal. IBM is acquiring Red Hat for approximately $34 billion in order to become the number one hybrid cloud provider in the world.
If you think open source projects doesn’t make money, it’s time to think again. A few months back Microsoft bought GitHub for $7.5 billion. SUSE Enterprise Linux was sold for $2.5 billion. Today IBM announced that it is buying Red Hat for approximately $34 billion.
Red Hat, the first billion dollar open source company is one of the strongest players in the containers and the cloud game. IBM has been lagging behind the likes of Microsoft and Google in the trillion dollar cloud market. So to strengthen their position in this field, IBM is acquiring Red Hat.

The rest of the story.

[kc1di]

Wonder what affect this will have on Fedora. IBM has been a good supporter of Linux over the years. So don't think much will change at RH but time will tell.

[jglen490]

I don't think it's necessarily bad for Linux. Red Hat was more of a service provider and platform integrator than anything else. They are a major player in my neck of the IT world.

[oshunluvr]

IBM wants into the the cloud market and buying your way in is quicker than starting from scratch. They eliminate a player and become one all in one transaction. I don't have as much negative attitude toward IBM as some of the other players. I'm not aware of large scale malfeasance by IBM as I am of MS or Apple, etc.

[TWPonKubuntu]

My bad impression of IBM springs from the OS/2 days. I was an IBM rep. for OS/2 and I had to tell several customers that they were out of luck with OS/2 upgrades in the future. That was bad for my business.

My fear is that something similar may happen with IBM and Linux. I'll admit that it not the same situation, but "once burned, twice shy" is fitting.

[chimak111]

https://jriddell.org/2018/11/02/red-hat-and-kde/

[oshunluvr]

My bad impression of IBM springs from the OS/2 days. I was an IBM rep. for OS/2 and I had to tell several customers that they were out of luck with OS/2 upgrades in the future. That was bad for my business.

My fear is that something similar may happen with IBM and Linux. I'll admit that it not the same situation, but "once burned, twice shy" is fitting.

I don't see the comparison. IBM isn't buying "Linux" they're buying a company that uses Linux to make a profit. The idea that a publicly traded 107 year old company that rarely buys other companies has totally changed their business model and spent $34 Billion - that's with a B - just to kill a successful business that doesn't actually even compete with their primary income stream is, well, just silly.

OS/2 was an IBM closed source wholly owned product that they ended, They can't "end" Linux even if they wanted to. Linus ensured that. It's less worse than if Red Hat went out of business, and even if IBM extinguishes them (not something IBM typically does unlike MS), that's means thousands of Linux developers on the streets looking for work - maybe forming a new company or beginning new projects, etc. Mandrake/Madriva Linux went out of business in 2011. What impact did that have on Linux? Not much. Mageia was formed and life went on. Granted, Red Hat is waaaayyy bigger than Mandriva ever was, but that's a bigger reason to believe we may see more from them in the way of development rather than less, and that's a good thing.

IMO, one of the things Linux suffers from is the lack of commercial developers providing products. Imagine if a company the weight of IBM starts improving, creating and selling Linux services to business? With just a few tweaks, they could run Windows Crapware off the planet. A viable Office replacement and a strong Adobe replacement and the business/government sectors would run-not-walk away from MS. Heck, our federal government has already issued internal directives requiring the use of open-source-code software when equal or better than alternatives to closed-source are available. The agency I work for (in an IT capacity) uses Red Hat already and I'm on a team designing a 100-200+ million dollar open-source project. Small by government standards, but still, it's a sea change.

https://jriddell.org/2018/11/02/red-hat-and-kde/

Clearly, this is a non-event for Plasma 5.

[GreyGeek]

Good points, oshunluver. I wonder if IBM buying RH and giving IBM a solid footing on the Open Source playground is to counter Microsoft's move of buying Git?

Disclaimer: My preference was and always is for FOSS. I've never been against buying closed source software if the need arises. I did it with RH 5.0 when their sound drivers would drive my Sony VAIO sound card (Remember 4Front?), and, I am not against paying for free software, either. Between Sept 1998 and Nov 2002 I purchased 22 consecutive SuSE licenses from WindRiver. And, over the years up until my retirement in 2008 I donated to various distributions and Open Source apps.

IF Kubuntu a/o Neon started charging for their distros, or asking a fee to download their distros, I'd pay in an instant.

[TWPonKubuntu]

While it may sound "silly", I think it is wise to watch for such changes in the world of software. When somebody with financial backing, like IBM, wants to enter the game field (pick the metaphor of your choice - Fox in the Hen house also fits) I think we, as both end users and business consumers of software, need to pay attention.

RE GGs comment, above, I'm not talking about whether software remains "free" or not. I am concerned about the mindset of whoever is behind such changes, in this case specifically the Boards of Directors at IBM and Microsoft. As I mentioned, IBM's actions re OS/2 had a direct impact on my business and income. So I am leery of their motives. IBM sacrificed their trust factor with me, in exchange for money, which can be said to be a simple business decision on their part. They've not done anything, in the intervening years, to rebuild that trust factor.

I'll admit that I am no longer a potential customer for IBM products and I don't play in the corporate field anymore. But I am watchful when such big players want to play with my preferred tools (Linux). On a positive note, the mere fact that IBM wants into the Linux game tells me that Linux has risen in status and desirability, at least in the business world. I wish the end consumer would recognize how well Linux works on the home computer system, present company excepted because that is preaching to the choir.