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IBM To Buy Red Hat, the Top Linux Distributor, For $34 Billion (bloomberg.com)
International Business Machines (IBM) is acquiring software maker Red Hat in a deal valued at $34 billion, the companies said Sunday. From a report: The purchase, announced on Sunday afternoon, is the latest competitive step among large business software companies to gain an edge in the fast-growing market for Internet-style cloud computing. In June, Microsoft acquired GitHub, a major code-sharing platform for software developers, for $7.5 billion. IBM said its acquisition of Red Hat was a move to open up software development on computer clouds, in which software developers write applications that run on remote data centers. From a press release: This acquisition brings together the best-in-class hybrid cloud providers and will enable companies to securely move all business applications to the cloud. Companies today are already using multiple clouds. However, research shows that 80 percent of business workloads have yet to move to the cloud, held back by the proprietary nature of today's cloud market. This prevents portability of data and applications across multiple clouds, data security in a multi-cloud environment and consistent cloud management.
IBM and Red Hat will be strongly positioned to address this issue and accelerate hybrid multi-cloud adoption. Together, they will help clients create cloud-native business applications faster, drive greater portability and security of data and applications across multiple public and private clouds, all with consistent cloud management. In doing so, they will draw on their shared leadership in key technologies, such as Linux, containers, Kubernetes, multi-cloud management, and cloud management and automation. IBM's and Red Hat's partnership has spanned 20 years, with IBM serving as an early supporter of Linux, collaborating with Red Hat to help develop and grow enterprise-grade Linux and more recently to bring enterprise Kubernetes and hybrid cloud solutions to customers. These innovations have become core technologies within IBM's $19 billion hybrid cloud business. Between them, IBM and Red Hat have contributed more to the open source community than any other organization.
IBM and Red Hat will be strongly positioned to address this issue and accelerate hybrid multi-cloud adoption. Together, they will help clients create cloud-native business applications faster, drive greater portability and security of data and applications across multiple public and private clouds, all with consistent cloud management. In doing so, they will draw on their shared leadership in key technologies, such as Linux, containers, Kubernetes, multi-cloud management, and cloud management and automation. IBM's and Red Hat's partnership has spanned 20 years, with IBM serving as an early supporter of Linux, collaborating with Red Hat to help develop and grow enterprise-grade Linux and more recently to bring enterprise Kubernetes and hybrid cloud solutions to customers. These innovations have become core technologies within IBM's $19 billion hybrid cloud business. Between them, IBM and Red Hat have contributed more to the open source community than any other organization.
I'm going to have to switch to Ubuntu.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
IBM said its acquisition of Red Hat was a move to open up software development on computer clouds, in which software developers write applications that run on remote data centers.
It's all open source. What's stopping them from developing to the Cloud, NOW?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Yeah once they're done, they're done. It's not like they couldn't just get together and and start a different distribution. Alas.
I think it's more for Red Hat's cloud infrastructure, than the Linux distro itself.
The next version will be branded IBM(R) SystemD/2.
Henceforth, it’ll be known as “Big Blue Hat”.
#DeleteChrome
Depends on the state. Non-compete clauses are unenforceable in some jurisdictions. IBM would want some of the people to stick around. You can't just take over a complex system from someone else and expect everything to run smoothly or know how to fix or extend it. Also, not everyone who works at Red Hat gets anything from the buyout unless they were regularly giving employees stock. A lot of people are going to want the stable paycheck of working for IBM instead of trying to start a new company.
However, some will inevitably get sick of working at IBM or end up being laid off at some point. If these people want to keep doing what they're doing, they can start a new company. If they're good at what they do, they probably won't have much trouble attracting some venture capital either.
IBM hates the olds! All People aged 50+ will be fired and replaced with coders fresh out of blockchain bootcamps! Also, all operations will be moved to a shanty town in India, those not willing to take a pay cut and relocate will be replaced with Indians.
"A lot of people are going to want the stable paycheck of working for IBM instead of trying to start a new company. "
Errrrmmm....I see you haven't been getting the memos. IBM has been bleeding their U.S. personal as fast as they can. Red Hatters would do well to eyeball their exit strategies.
IBM acquisitions never go well. All companies acquired by IBM go through a process of "Blue washing", in which the heart and soul of the acquired company is ripped out, the body burnt, and the remaining ashes to be devoured and defecated by its army of clueless salesmen and consultants. It's a sad, and infuriating, repeated pattern. They no longer develop internal talent. They drive away the remaining people left over from the time when they still did develop things. They think they can just buy their way into a market or technology, somehow completely oblivious to the fact that their strategy of firing all their acquired employees/knowledge and hoping to sell software they have no interest in developing would somehow still retain customers. They literally could have just reshuffled and/or hired more developers to work on the kernel, but the fact they didn't shows they have no intention of actually contributing.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Lol you don't have to think. It's literally in the press release:
IBM and Red Hat will be strongly positioned to address this issue and accelerate hybrid multi-cloud adoption.
the possibilities ... OS/2 compatibility, Presentation Manager instead of Gnome/KDE, systemd for AIX?
Kanga: That's not a fish, that's a bird.
Pooh: Yes, but is it a starling or a mackeral?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Nuh uh, look at the market share of OS/2 and AIX. /s
Red Hatters would do well to review history how IBM treated ROLM, and how IBM was able to handle a start up culture. IBM sales team and Red Hat's will be a shotgun marriage for sure. CentOS should already feel the cold of hell, as they have a short TTL.
Red Hat hired the CentOS developers 4.5-years ago.
Fedora is fully owned by Red Hat and CentOS requires the availability of the Red Hat repositories which they aren't obliged to make public to non-customers..
Fedora is fully under Red Hat's control. It's used as a bleeding edge distro for hobbyists and as a testing ground for code before it goes into RHEL. I doubt its going away since it does a great job of establishing mindshare but no business in their right mind is going to run Fedora in production.
But CentOS started as a separate organization with a fairly adversarial relationship to Red Hat since it really is free RHEL which cuts into their actual customer base. They didn't need Red Hat repos back then, just the code which they rebuilt from scratch (which is why they were often a few months behind).
If IBM kills CentOS a new one will pop up in a week, that's the beauty of the GPL.
I stole this Sig
requires the availability of the Red Hat repositories which they aren't obliged to make public to non-customers
...and this is why Richard Stallman Calls Open Source Movement 'Amoral'. But RH must make the source publicly available under the GPL.
Red Hat closed Friday at $116.68 per share, looks like the buy out is for $190. Not everyone will be unhappy with this. I hope the Red Hat employees that won't like the upcoming cultural changes have stock and options, it may soften the blow a bit.
Oh, wait, /. is a US joint. Ok, forget about what I said.
And now attention: ... :-)
Getting modded into earths core in 3,2,1
Virtually anyone running an actual production system.
I hope IBM keeps them pretty separate. One of the reasons RHEL is so successful is they've done a good job of maintaining a good relationship with the hobbyist crowd. They're not as cool as Ubuntu but they have a lot of fans in the community, both devs and users, and that helps them get into the server rooms.
Probably Red Hat's biggest liability has been their size, the more Free Software aligned crowd is very nervous about big corporations. If they ever start losing the community some other distro is going to start popping up in the server room.
I stole this Sig
The people getting handed 34 billion dollars are the stockholder not the employees. The vast majority of that money goes to people who do not work at the company.
Well, CentOS is right there already.
TBH, I don't see a problem. What IBM sells these days is consultancy and support, they do have a few "packaged" products but even then the way they make a lot of the money is through integration. I can see it being in IBM's best interests to keep the RedHat model alive, maintaining a first class distribution and selling support to fund it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Lennart already fucked up RHEL, I hope IBM will get rid of him and systemd.
Look on the bright side: Poettering works for Red Hat. (Reposting because apparently Poettering has mod points.)
Oh, good. Now IBM can turn RH into AIX while simultaneously suffocating whatever will be left of Redhat's staff with IBM's crushing, indifferent, incompetent bureaucracy.
This is what we call a lose - lose situation. Well, except for the president of Redhat, of course. Jim Whitehurst just got rich.
Well, it *is* IBM....I'm sure they can still make it worse.
The only company I know that ruins software they acquire worse than IBM, is CA.....it may survive IBM, but if CA buys them, it is an instant mark of death for the software.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Referring to culture; agreed Red Hat is not a start-up, but “The Open Organization” is purchased by “Product-type divisional organizational structure”. When was the last time the CEO of IBM sat on the service desk? Also ROLM was far from a start-up, but there culture was and is reflected in Silicon Valley today. “West Coast Hippies” purchase by “East Coast Button-ups”. Going from a “Great Place to Work” to a cog in the machine.
Merge SystemD with traditional AIX management tools with binary configuration database?
Microsoft will next merge with IBM.
Think about it. Makes sense. Microsoft couldn't purchase Redhat directly, that would make too many people upset.
But if IBM purchases Redhat, then Microsoft purchases IBM, they get Redhat by proxy. Then they have what they want - direct control over one of the most important Linux distros in the world. That, along with Github, gives them a pretty strong position in the F/OSS ecosystem.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Indeed. Maybe they will even sack Poettering. If so, they will do a ton of good.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
But can nuns run it?
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
You forgot Oracle.
They were top notch you mean. Current IBM management only knows about acquiring companies and outsourcing development work.
Well, it *is* IBM....I'm sure they can still make it worse.
The only company I know that ruins software they acquire worse than IBM, is CA.....it may survive IBM, but if CA buys them, it is an instant mark of death for the software.
Symantec. It's where good software goes to die.
Nice try. OpenBSD is alive and well and is the premiere security research OS. OpenSSH, LibreSSL, pf and many others are all OpeBSD inventions and are used literally by billions of devices. Every router, every switch, every Linux distro, every BSD distro uses OpenSSH alone. Try again...
ah - Red Hat was founded in Raleigh NC and their headquarters are still there. Last I heard Raleigh NC is on the East Coast
What do you get when you add a Red Hat to Big Blue? You get a big purple hat, obviously. I wonder if they're thinking of adding an ostrich feather? Heheheh
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
So much for Redhat's fight against software patents, IBM is the biggest patent troll of them all. Traditionally goes easy on open source projects but some flipping idiot might decide at any time that monetizing patents is the new get rich quick scheme of the month.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Indeed. Maybe they will even sack Poettering. If so, they will do a ton of good.
Surely you jest. Knowing IBM, as I do, they're more likely to make Poettering the head of the division.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Footnote: $699 License Fee applies to your systemP server running RHEL 7 with 4 cores activated for one year. To activate additional processor cores on the systemP server, a fee of $199 per core applies. systemP offers a new Semi-Activation Mode now. In systemP Semi-Activation Mode, you will be only charged for all processor calls exceeding 258 MIPS, which will be processed by additional semi-activated cores on a pro-rata basis. RHEL on systemP servers also offers a Partial Activation Mode, where additional cores can be activated in Inhibited Efficiency Mode. To know more about Semi-Activation Mode, Partial Activation Mode and Inhibited Efficiency Mode, visit http://www.ibm.com/systemp or contact your IBM systemP Sales Engineer.
Here I was, trying out some new stuff which didn't work on my Ubuntu test system. Manager looks over my shoulder and asked what it takes to get the thing running, to which I replied "we need to buy Redhat". Guess I should have added "licences".
"... RH must make the source publicly available.."
That's not what the GPL says.
You only have to distribute the source code, or an offer to the source code to the recipient of the object code. It doesn't need to be public. RHEL's been good about making it public, especially since they do not publicly distribute the object code.
For CentOS to continue receiving the complete source code from IBM, they would need to subscribe to every single product that they republish the object code for.
This is not to say they couldn't get it from someone else who subscribed, but if IBM doesn't distribute RHEL in a similar omnibus form, it could be very difficult to set up reliable relationships with all the organizations which subscribe to every component of what is now RHEL.
So, sadly, I"M guessing IBM will acquire and fuck up RHEL
I think the more accurate term is 'ramp up' not 'fuck up' - more and more Open Source is about vendor on-ramps.
They contributed JFS and ported DB/2. They ported Linux to their mainframes and ran the first Linux TV ads. During a superbowl, I think.
On the other hand, their maintenance of these projects, other than their mainframe, has been limited.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Real news is: wow! IBM has $34b!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The UNIX code belonged to Novell not to SCO. SCO had nothing else than hot air and bluff. Or so the courts decided without consulting you.
Lennart already fucked up RHEL
In what way? Show me your evidence that systemd has in any way affected RHEL's marketshare that didn't drive it to a competitor that also uses systemd.
The way I see it, the only people who actually think he fucked up RHEL are ACs and about 10 vocal slashdot users.
The core CentOS leadership are now Red Hat employees. They're not clear of nor uninvolved in this purchase.
My feelings exactly. As a former employee for both places, I see this as the death knell for Red Hat. Not immediately, not quickly, but eventually Red Hat's going to go the same way as every other company IBM has acquired.
Red Hat's doom (again, all IMO) started about 10 years ago or so when Matt Szulik left and Jim Whitehurst came on board. Nothing against Jim, but he NEVER seemed to grasp what F/OSS was about. Hell, when he came onboard he wouldn't (and never did) use Linux at all: instead he used a Mac, and so did the rest of the EMT (executive management team) over time. What company is run by people who refuse to use its own product except for one that doesn't have faith. The person on top of the BRAND AND PEOPLE team "needed" an iPad, she said, to do her work (quoting a friend in the IT dept who was asked to get it and set it up for her).
Then when they (the EMTs) wanted to move away from using F/OSS internally to outsourcing huge aspects of our infrastructure (like no longer using F/OSS for email and instead contracting with GOOGLE to do our email, calendaring and document sharing) is when, again for me, the plane started to spiral. How can we sell to OUR CUSTOMERS the idea that "Red Hat and F/OSS will suit all of your corporate needs" when, again, the people running the ship didn't think it would work for OURS? We had no special email or calendar needs, and if we did WE WERE THE LEADERS OF OPEN SOURCE, couldn't we make it do what we want? Hell, I was on an internal (but on our own time) team whose goal was to take needs like this and incubate them with an open source solution to meet that need.
But the EMTs just didn't want to do that. They were too interested in what was "the big thing" (at the time Open Shift was where all of our hiring and resources were being poured) to pay attention to the foundations that were crumbling.
And now, here we are. Red Hat is being subsumed by the largest closed-source company on the planet, one who does their job sub-optimally (to be nice). This is the end of Red Hat as we know it. Without 5-7 years Red Hat will go the way of Tivoli and Lotus: it will be a brand name that lacks any of what made the original company what it was when it was acquired.
Stock is simply a form of ownership. I guess we could abolish joint ownership and just let wealthy families control everything like the good 'ol days. The part you hate about it (people making money by trading) is a feature, not a flaw. It's a system where human nature works for the common good. Yes, you have people playing the market, but in exchange for that behavior that you don't like, you get the much greater good of liquidity and access to vast amounts of capital. I can be a part-owner of any company I want - I don't have to be part of the royal court or landed gentry. I can get a small share of the exact same company that they can and benefit from its growth in a way that was inconceivable to my ancestors. Companies have access to a huge pile of cash without relying on a few big holders of capital. Which brings me to...
Interest. I voluntarily and happily pay interest on my home so that I'm building equity in something with real value rather than giving a landlord the bulk of my life's income. Yeah, the banker makes money from my labor. But so what? He makes a lot less than the landlord would if I didn't have access to capital. On the business side, businesses similarly can go to banks or the bond market to finance expansion. Yes, the bank or bondholders make a little off the top simply by possessing capital, but in exchange the business can make far more money and hire more workers.
In other words, you are listing only the bad things, which are an order of magnitude smaller than the good things that come with easier access to capital.
Look at countries which don't have agricultural futures markets. Farmers can't get a contract for their crops, and so are left guessing what the crop will be worth at the end of the year - far too late to make a decision. They would much rather trade a small amount of the total in exchange for an ability to plan ahead with a concrete price at the end of the season. Again, yes, someone is making money by simply having money - but the farmers do far better overall and it is easily worth the tradeoff.
Profit is literally a math equation and has nothing to do with screwing people out of anything.
IP... I'll grant you, that is a lot fuzzier. I think it probably has value in the short term, but we've let it get out of hand. It's hard to justify giving someone a government-granted monopoly for 100 years or so.
I'll add another to your list: the concept of limited liability in the form of corporations. This completely screws with the whole libertarian individual responsibility concept that our country was founded upon. I can understand not wanting Granny's assets in her retirement fund to be at risk when a company she owns does a Very Bad Thing, but it seems excessive to extend this protection to activist owners.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
My feelings exactly. As a former employee for both places, I see this as the death knell for Red Hat. Not immediately, not quickly, but eventually Red Hat's going to go the same way as every other company IBM has acquired.
Red Hat's doom (again, all IMO) started about 10 years ago or so when Matt Szulik left and Jim Whitehurst came on board. Nothing against Jim, but he NEVER seemed to grasp what F/OSS was about. Hell, when he came onboard he wouldn't (and never did) use Linux at all: instead he used a Mac, and so did the rest of the EMT (executive management team) over time. What company is run by people who refuse to use its own product except for one that doesn't have faith. The person on top of the BRAND AND PEOPLE team "needed" an iPad, she said, to do her work (quoting a friend in the IT dept who was asked to get it and set it up for her).
Then when they (the EMTs) wanted to move away from using F/OSS internally to outsourcing huge aspects of our infrastructure (like no longer using F/OSS for email and instead contracting with GOOGLE to do our email, calendaring and document sharing) is when, again for me, the plane started to spiral. How can we sell to OUR CUSTOMERS the idea that "Red Hat and F/OSS will suit all of your corporate needs" when, again, the people running the ship didn't think it would work for OURS? We had no special email or calendar needs, and if we did WE WERE THE LEADERS OF OPEN SOURCE, couldn't we make it do what we want? Hell, I was on an internal (but on our own time) team whose goal was to take needs like this and incubate them with an open source solution to meet that need.
But the EMTs just didn't want to do that. They were too interested in what was "the big thing" (at the time Open Shift was where all of our hiring and resources were being poured) to pay attention to the foundations that were crumbling.
And now, here we are. Red Hat is being subsumed by the largest closed-source company on the planet, one who does their job sub-optimally (to be nice). This is the end of Red Hat as we know it. Without 5-7 years Red Hat will go the way of Tivoli and Lotus: it will be a brand name that lacks any of what made the original company what it was when it was acquired.
Don't worry, they will all be punished for this- they will now have to use Lotus Notes.