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How Red Hat Decides Which Open Source Companies To Buy

Posted by Soulskill on from the putting-that-dartboard-to-use dept.

darthcamaro writes "You don't really buy an open source company — since the tech is all open. But then again, Red Hat 'buys' open source companies all the time, they just bought one this week. So when does it makes sense for Red Hat to buy a company versus just building it on their own? Apparently, it all comes down to community. 'When you buy an open source company, if the people aren't coming and passionate about staying then you spend a lot of money for what? Because you don't get a lot of intellectual property,' Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst said."

4 of 20 comments (clear)

  1. What a dumb statement by HarrySquatter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You don't really buy an open source company — since the tech is all open.

    What a dumb statement. Buying an open source company is buying their copyrights, possibly any patents they hold and getting to acquire their people.

    1. Re:What a dumb statement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not to mention their customers, prospective customers, and the non-paying community of happy users who find and fix bugs, suggest enhancements, and spread the word about what a great product it is.

    2. Re:What a dumb statement by rgbrenner · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Buying an open source company is buying their copyrights

      ^ This... plus.. you have to read between the lines of what red hat is saying.

      If a project has a large community, it is because they have a lot of users.

      Red Hat sells support.

      A large community == users to sell support to.

  2. People Red Hat employes is the reason we pick them by ron_ivi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    We're a pretty heavy postgres shop, and Red Hat employing one of the top developers of that project (Tom) was the way we chose which distro to use (and actually pay for). Not that we actually needed such support (he gives at least as support on the project mailing list) --- but for marking reasons we needed *a* tier-1 distro with "official" "support" --- so we chose to support them based on them supporting Tom.