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Could Microsoft Buy Red Hat?
An anonymous reader writes "Various news sources including ZDnet are today reporting that Microsoft is considering buying out Red Hat, speculating that 'Microsoft could see Red Hat's acquisition as a nice way to undermine IBM, but might not consider that a sufficient reason to do it,' adding that Red Hat is however '...a company that wants to be Microsoft and, like Microsoft, makes its living packaging and selling other people's ideas.'" That description seems to miss the key point that Red Hat releases the software they package and sell as Free software, and that both companies pay coders to create and improve software in the first place.
Doesn't red hat sell support?
Interesting, although I read this blog entry earlier and it is good food for thought.
No more than they currently are. When companies buy each other, they typically maintain corporate structures (or create new ones). It's actually fairly rare for a big company to be anything other than a holding company if they have participated in much acquisition activity. For example, MS Great Plains is probably still a separate corporation (entirely owned by MS).
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
The Windows Services for Unix package includes GPL'ed code, including gcc.
Microsoft's UNIX in the 1980's? Based on AT&T's license and they basically killed off the product a few years down the road.
GrokLaw readers will recognize Paul Murphy as the SYS-CON writer who likes to defend SCO. The statement from the ZDNet blog that should raise a red flag is this:
Anyone who isn't an idiot knows that F/OSS business are supposed to sell support with their Free licenses, not the other way around. The only rebellion I see against traditional software vendors like Microsoft, not RedHat. This guy is just spreading FUD.
RedHat has all of their developers sign agreements with very interesting & strict terms. I've signed 2 of them in the past 3 years (changed projects). It's an understatement to say that they will not be quitting and working for suse any time soon.
"[Microsoft should buy Sun because] they can get their 2 billion back from Sun that way."
Now that's just retarded. Don't you think that the $2 billion would be included in the cost of Sun?
Nobody is going to sell $2 billion cash for anything less than $2 billion.
Also, I'd like to add that the main 3 GNU toolchain packages, GCC, GLIBC and Binutils, are all (AFAIK) hosted and funded by Redhat.
Jeremy
"While it might be difficult to prove, this would open Microsoft up to accusations of assimilating GPL code in to Windows."
Or the other way around, along the lines of what SCO accused IBM of doing, only, perhaps in Microsoft, it could lead to a case that actually has merit, and also favors Microsoft.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Microsoft does in fact have such a clause in their contract.
1: When you are hired, they claim ownership of any IP that you created unless you specifically list it as excluded on a form they give you.
2: You must get permission in writing from Microsoft to do any work outside Microsoft, or do any moonlighting
3: If a dispute arises, you agree to grant them a non-exclusive, non-revokable, worldwide, royalty-free license to distribute, modify, and re-use the disputed IP.