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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.
1. This could be viewed as a 'strategic acquisition' so as to provide 'leading edge technologies' from wherever they were. Then, they could release brain-dead and damaged versions of RedHat Linux that failed under certain conditions;
2. Admitting that Linux has redeeming qualities is not a problem given that the marketplace has already proved that. Like NASA's mantra, "Buy It and Kill It" (tm) would be an easy operation to undertake.
It would dramatically confuse the market
3. Dramatically confusing the market would work in Microsoft's favor. further, they would offer "upgrade paths" that start in Linux and go towards MS Server 2k3 in short order.
As a way to reduce competition, this might make total sense. Yes, it would be profoundly evil, and the antitrust authorities might look at it that way, too, but given the Bush administration's justice dept., any challenge to (potential or actual) big money donors seems unlikely.
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
Instead of Red Hat, MSFT would be better off buying Sun- they both sell propriatary systems, both dislike linux (not Sun so much, but they do) and it would be an extension of many of the deals they have struck recently. I don't see where RH makes sense, but I can see a better story with Sun given the slump in their stock, etc....
# nohup
Why?
- Sun has valuable patents that fit Microsoft's new IP strategy.
- The can get their 2 billion back from Sun that way.
- Sun and Microsoft have a good working relationship; could be rephrased as McNealey makes Balmer Smile
- and most importantly, it
seems like McNealey wants to sell
Buying RedHat wouldn't hurt IBM at all considering that they're at least as much a SuSE/Novell partner as they are a redhat partner.For all of the insane articles that percolate to the surface on /., this article is impressively insane.
So what "various news sources" are cited here?
"News source #1" is Paul Murphy of ZDNet, who basically says "gee, I suppose it's *possible* that M$ could buy RH, but, um, not really."
"News source #2: is "whitedust," the well-known... er, well-respected... er, who are they again? Anyway, the quote from "whitedust"...
"On the surface of it, the concept of Microsoft buying out Red Hat does indeed seem rather humorous. However as commented in the ZDnet article; Red Hat is a company that shares much the same business model as Microsoft in that essentially it makes it's (sic) living packaging and selling other people's ideas. That alone is enough to give some credabilty (sic) to the notion of some kind of thoretical ethical union one that would perhaps be less likley (sic) with any other open source developer."
So, to recap:
Coke-snorting "whitedust" website claims that Red Hat and Microsoft are a perfect pair, editorializes that purchase is imminent!
Really, truly, impressively insane.
Exactly... people dont realize how much Red Hat does for the community. Most distros just package up pre-existing software and bundle it in an easy to use way. Red Hat actually writes the stuff and pays a lot of devlopers a lot of money to do it. They've contributed far more code then any other entity in the kernel, they also nearly completely coded all of Gnome except for a few tidbits here and there (they even host Gnome.org) They've done wonders for Open Office on linux, including coding GCJ so that all the java components for OO.o could be compiled natively and distributed without a JVM.(They also played a big role in getting OO.o to use native widgets) Red Hat coders also do a hell of a lot of coding for Apache and make major advancements in all sorts of areas like File Systems and enterprise stability. They were a key force in getting SELinux into the kernel, as well as coding most of the drivers that are used in your hardware, and are in large part a reason why linux is considered business ready today. Now they are pushing major advancements in Linux's graphics capabilities and giving it a modern day desktop with modern day capabilites. The list could go on for quite a bit longer but I think I'll stop there. For all the knocking that people do of Red Hat, they sure as hell do alot for the community.
Regards,
Steve