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Red Hat — Stand Alone Or Get Bought?

Posted by Soulskill on from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.

head_dunce writes "It seems that this economy has inspired a lot of businesses to move to Linux, with Red Hat posting profits that beat everyone's expectations. There's a dark side to being a highly profitable company in a down economy, though — now there are talks of Citigroup and Oracle wanting to buy Red Hat. For a while now, we've been watching Yahoo fend off Carl Icahn and Steve Ballmer so that they could stay independent, but the fight seems to be a huge distraction for Yahoo, with lots of energy (and money) invested. Will Red Hat stay independent? What potential buyer would make for a good parent company?"

3 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. Why is redhat worth so much? by grahamsz · · Score: 0, Troll

    I have to admit i've always been at a total loss as to why redhat could have the same sort of market cap as someone like Sun (at least pre-takeover rumours).

    I suppose it's certainly more profitable to take other people's work and package it up, but what does that offer to a buyer?

    1. Re:Why is redhat worth so much? by grahamsz · · Score: 0, Troll

      I feel like i've heard a lot of grumbling about the quality of redhats support. Ultimately they are supporting something they didn't build so I find it hard to believe they can provide the same level of enterprise support as someone like ibm or sun would provide (though plenty grumble about their support level)

  2. Re:RedHat is a dead end by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    You missed the parents point, totally. You are where the puck is. He is going where it's going to be. IOW, new users install ubuntu, not fedora. Ie, the redhat potential userbase is _shrinking_ while the ubuntu/debian one is _growing_.