IBM to buy RedHat for 34 Billion!

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WANg

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Jun 10, 2018
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..or this can be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Either Oracle will kill RHEL support for their products, or IBM will make it "interesting" for Oracle to get RHEL patches for OEL. Either way, hope this does not spell out to some unpleasantness for Scientific Linux/CentOS users down the line.
 

amalurk

Active Member
Dec 16, 2016
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Let's see, Red Hat trades at 70x earnings and IBM trades at 20x, should work out well for IBM shareholders paying a premium for Red Hat, not.
 

Evan

Well-Known Member
Jan 6, 2016
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Next move certainly seems like Canonical or SuSe being taken over as well.

IBM has been somewhat open source friendly in the past and so I do also reserve judgment, maybe this is what Linux needs as it reaches middle age
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
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I remember reading "Last year, Redhat earned $259 million on revenue of $2.92 billion"

IBM paid $34B for Redhat :rolleyes:.
I am glad that I am not a direct IBM stock holder ( might have IBM stock in my index fund)
 

BLinux

cat lover server enthusiast
Jul 7, 2016
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I own RH shares, and in the short term I would think this will work out for me. However, long term wise, I'm concerned. Most large corporations in the US struggle to innovate with the overly bureaucratic corporate cultures that are unable to take real meaningful risks. This trend also seems to increase with size. Most acquisitions like this (large old business merging with large new business) don't often end well, much less open source software based company.

Being a long time RedHat (from before RHEL) user and occasional contributor, I'm concerned, but mostly feel a little sad. I felt similarly when Oracle bought Sun and MySQL.
 
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BLinux

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Jul 7, 2016
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I am mostly excited for this because I think it almost forces MS to buy Canonical
why would you be excited for MS to buy Canonical? just curious... I know MS has in recent years really embraced open source, so I'm not necessarily anit-MS or anything, but curious how you see that type of merger being positive for the technology or community?
 
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Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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Actually I think a better option for MS would be SuSe as they have more and enterprise footprint.

The real questions as has been pointed out will any of this slow innovation or instead is it what is needed to really push Linux into prime time ???
 

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
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This is huge. I think this could be the infusion of good new ideas that IBM needs to get back to its heyday (is that how you spell that word?)
That's not how IBM works. Red Hat will be assimilated and its existing culture chopped up and destroyed. Large swathes of the workforce will be RAed and outsourced. Anyone with half a brain at RH will be updating their CV this morning.

(Hoping I'll be proved wrong but I sincerely doubt it. Seen this happen too many times already)
 

gigatexal

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Nov 25, 2012
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That's not how IBM works. Red Hat will be assimilated and its existing culture chopped up and destroyed. Large swathes of the workforce will be RAed and outsourced. Anyone with half a brain at RH will be updating their CV this morning.

(Hoping I'll be proved wrong but I sincerely doubt it. Seen this happen too many times already)
Sad but I could see that happening
 

Klee

Well-Known Member
Jun 2, 2016
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That's not how IBM works. Red Hat will be assimilated and its existing culture chopped up and destroyed. Large swathes of the workforce will be RAed and outsourced. Anyone with half a brain at RH will be updating their CV this morning.

(Hoping I'll be proved wrong but I sincerely doubt it. Seen this happen too many times already)

Yep, I'm going with this as the outcome.
 

zkrr01

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Jun 28, 2018
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What happened to IBM? Twenty years ago they was the king of computers, now you hardly hear their name!
 

cesmith9999

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Mar 26, 2013
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They were king in the 80's and 90's.

Not so certain about anytime after that.

Chris
 

zkrr01

Member
Jun 28, 2018
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They were the king of computers the 70's, 80's and 90's. But my question was what caused their downfall?
 

gigatexal

I'm here to learn
Nov 25, 2012
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They were the king of computers the 70's, 80's and 90's. But my question was what caused their downfall?
Giving Microsoft the chance to be THE software platform for the IBM PC could have been where it started.

Then they could have been RedHat but they had a tepid adoption to Linux pushing AIX and such.

And then I think it’s stopping R&D to do stupid share buy backs to juice earnings for Wall Street couldn’t have helped.