Official: IBM to gobble Red Hat for $34bn – yes, the enterprise Linux biz IBM intends to acquire enterprise Linux maker Red Hat for $34bn (£27bn). Following rumors of a deal over the weekend, Big Blue announced the move here, in the past hour, and Red Hat's take is here. IBM made an offer of $190 per issued and outstanding Red Hat share, which was accepted: the current price stands at $116. …
Easy, the same way they deal with their existing employees. It'll be the IBM way or the highway. We'll see the usual repetitive and doomed IBM strategy of brutal downsizings accompanied by the earnest IBM belief that a few offshore wage slaves can do as good a job as anybody else.
The product and service will deteriorate, pricing will have to go up significantly to recover the tens of billions of dollars of "goodwill" that IBM have just splurged, and in five years time we'll all be saying "remember how the clueless twats at IBM bought Red Hat and screwed it up?"
One of IBM's main problems is lack of revenue, and yet Red Hat only adds about $3bn to their revenue. As with most M&A the motivators here are a surplus of cash and hopeless optimism, accompanied by the suppression of all common sense.
Well done Gini, it's another winner.
I was supporting Oracle Application Server on Sun (then) Solaris servers when IBM (Global Services) laid me off 11 years ago, and they still kept a lot of such folks (along with WebLogic admins, and some of those in Brazil thought they could support OAS satisfactorily...) after that round. Their contract support would hire whatever skills the customer demanded. Dunno about now, but seems they still attempt to do something of that sort, if not so thoroughly...
But this time it's different. Redhat is opensource ... which means that the biggest asset that RH could possibly bring to the table is the knowledge in the heads of its employees. If they are gone, nothing is stopping them from joining CentOS team or perhaps setting up a new distribution based entirely on RH (also with commercial support, because they know how to do it).
But I think this deal is about something else. The winner here is Power CPU architecture, which will receive "virtually unlimited" support from the favourite distribution of banks and other large (and medium-sized) institutions.
Nobody will switch from X86 to Power (well, there may be the odd few, driven primarily by application requirements and maybe a CIO here or there with real courage as Power is a amazing hardware platform) but IBM needs a viable, perceived as modern OS such as Linux to keep the AS/400 iSeries and AIX folks from running off. And they are wishfully thinking, hoping and praying that the same folks and more will perceive and adopt this in the same way they did the Sysrem/34, System/36, System/38 and subsequently AS/400 and now Power as they did so many decades ago. Alas, IBM has never done a good job marketing these superior operating systems and hardware plus has been overcharging for decades as well, milking the iSeries base terribly in my opinion. Expect more of the same. I have been out of this loop for a while now but if it were me I would be calling my SUSE rep. Years ago they used to say Linux is Linux is Linux but it’s NOT. Oh well I hope the best for Power but time will tell.
just curious why you think Power is so amazing.
to me, it's impressive the engineering that IBM can still bring to bear, but the results are distinctly meh. sure, they occasionally get out in front in some micro-architectural metric. but differences that matter to real systems?
the only thing I can think of is Power's tight integration with Nvidia - really just a political thing. And who cares much about it? It is at best a marginal benefit for a very niche market (gold-plated HPC clusters).
real SMT, sure, but show me a widespread use-case where that's critical.
Well all the high end systems I've worked on (with >64 cores/CPUs/procs/whatever) have been Power systems using AIX. Windows has never come close. Oracle is often the DB to host.
The only other high end box I've come across has been the mainframe. But then they are a different beast filling a different need (stupidly high I/O) for a particular market (FSS mainly).
You don't really think banks will change from x86 to Power because IBM has bought RedHat do you?
Probably not, but it likely will kill any of RedHat's work on Arm. IBM will want to push them to stick to Power development.
First, IBM will be hands off. At least for the first year it will be a separate company.
Based on the PR and statements made by IBM, they will not touch Red Hat (RH). They know that if they do, their investment will go poof as the people walk away and go work for someone else.
Second... the deal itself makes no sense.
What's the play?
They say its for the cloud, but really?
They say its for an open cloud / hybrid experience. Buying RH doesn't add to this when they could have partnered.
As to hardware, IBM got out of that long ago. IBM sells whatever they can sell and the sales reps will sell the most of anything where they get the highest compensation. (e.g. Forget DB2, we make more money from Websphere and we don't have to deal with competing against Oracle, which we also sell... )
So I wouldn't worry about Arm architecture. .
But don't worry, IBM will screw it up... They always do...
Posted Anon because I still remember my serial number...
This may be more about moving from POWER to x86 (and maybe back again later!). Let me explain. IBM have a massive AIX customer base who want to get off POWER onto more commodity x86 kit. In order to migrate there needs to be a critical mass of enterprise application stacks that run on BOTH the old (POWER+AIX) and new (x86+Linux) plus large 'migration projects'. The medium to long term revenue is in the giant projects to migrate and around software licensing and support contracts once everything has gone 'to the cloud'. When IBM are the largest supporter of the most commonly used operating systems in server land while offering a reasonable alternative to AWS (or stay on AWS if you must!) then this is a rather canny and strategic investment for them. Far less likely to have legs is IBM using their half a million internal users as beta testers for an enterprise-focused RHEL desktop distribution, challenge there is that IBM sold off the x86 hardware business to Lenovo and the Apple/Microsoft partnerships are not interested in alternatives to OSX and Windows.
"IBM sold off the x86 hardware business to Lenovo and the Apple/Microsoft partnerships are not interested in alternatives to OSX and Windows."
Hmm,.. I recall Dell occasionally steps into the fray with Linux developer laptops and Windows-free desktops. Dell isn't as much of a direct competitor to IBM as others like HP, Oracle, etc, so a partnership where Dell boxes get shipped with IBM logos at a marked-up price to big IBM shops might work.
Long time ago Dell has promised Microsoft not to increase demand for Linux. If they dare do the deal you suggest, something tells me their sales of Windows powered PC/laptops will suffer when MS licenses will suddenly become more expensive.
"Long time ago Dell has promised Microsoft not to increase demand for Linux."
No, Dell found that Linux was far more expensive to create builds and drivers for and to provide support for than Windows, so it was never more than a niche option on laptops / desktops.
Power is still a failure.
Power never managed to escape the stink of single-source. Yes, that's still a major issue - just look at all the teeth-gnashing that results from depending too much on Intel.
Has Power ever suffered from anything but "why bother"? Are there actual OS/software problems in the existing environment that cause problems? Buying RH might well fix them, but afaik, Power is unexceptional as just another one of the gazzilion arches that Linux supports.
BINGO! After doing research on MANY CPU systems at the hardware level, that IBM Power-9 and the upcoming Power-10 are in fact MUCH MUCH BETTER than Intel XEON or AMD EPYC. IBM has royally screwed up the marketing of the power architecture which has MORE THREADS, MORE SPEED PER CORE (ideal for single thread linear tasks) and MORE access to larger block of memory!
All-in-all, Power-9 is a SUPERIOR CPU that is hobbled by some of the WORST MARKETING I have ever seen! A dual CPU Power-9 system if it had a HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) for Windows Server 2016/2019 would blow away any Intel/AMD system at the same price point. There would be NO CONTEST in terms of I/O's per second, TCP/IP V4/V6 communications latency, storage size ability and maximum local storage memory size for VM's.
The engineers to made the Power chips are SUPERB...but the marketing guys were dweebs! Just sign off the ENTIRE POWER architecture over to Dell which would the ONE DECENT COMPANY that could actually BE ABLE to market pro-level desktops, servers, laptops and tablets using such Power CPU's!!!
If IBM buys Redhat then what will happen to CentOS?
As long as IBM doesn't close-source RH stuff -- most of which they couldn't if they wanted to -- CentOS will still be able to do builds of it. The only thing RH can really enforce control over is the branding and documentation.
FWIW, Red Hat has never quite been that kind of company. RH is quite old, remember, and definitely East (nearly) Coast, not West Coast. It was never a Valley company. I don't think I've ever seen anyone in an RH office in a dressing gown :) It's maybe not shirt sleeves for engineers, but at least a clean t-shirt...in general the RH culture has always been a bit more buttoned-down than a Valley company would maybe be.
Now, the 'working from home' thing might be interesting...
(posting anon for obvious reasons)
I don't think I've ever seen anyone in an RH office in a dressing gown :) It's maybe not shirt sleeves for engineers, but at least a clean t-shirt...in general the RH culture has always been a bit more buttoned-down than a Valley company would maybe be.
About 25 years ago I was asked to run a Unix internals class for a group of IBM lab engineers who were working on bringing some of mainframe land into the Unix age. No doubt influanced by things like DPM's Diary (this was before El'Reg existed even as a news letter) I was expecting the blue suits, white shirts and blue ties. But like lab engineers the world over, this wasn't their look. The manager arrived on the first morning in an Iron Maiden tee shirt and their wasn't a corporate clone in the team.
Not necessarily. They will certainly pay for a lot of talent: whether it's still there in six months' time is another question entirely.
If IBM's corporate culture manages to drive away a sufficient number of good RH staff (who, arguably, are pound-for-pound a more valuable resource than the average IBM equivalent) then the money will have been a spectacular waste. After all, if they'd merely wanted an OS, they could be using CentOS :-) and my guess is IBM will have to work hard to overcome RH customers' natural (and IMHO largely justified) suspicion of Big Blue.
What happens over the next 12—24 months will be ... interesting. Usually the acquisition of a relatively young, limber outfit with modern product and service by one of the slow-witted traditional brontosaurs does not end well.
"I found that those with real talent that matched IBM needs are well looked after."
The problem is that when you have served your need you tend to get downsized as the expectation is that the cheaper offshore bodies can simply take over support etc after picking up the skills they need over a few months !!!
This 'Blue meets Red and assimilates' will be very interesting to watch and will need lots and lots of popcorn on hand !!!
:)
"What happens over the next 12—24 months will be ... interesting. Usually the acquisition of a relatively young, limber outfit with modern product and service by one of the slow-witted traditional brontosaurs does not end well"
The acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle comes to mind there. When Microsoft bought out GitHub, they made a promise to let it run independently and now IBM's given a similar pledge in respect of RedHat. They ought to abide by that promise because the alternatives are already out there in the form of Ubuntu and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
This will not end well
Except for the Red Hat folks who have stock options.
BTW, what's IBM's upper age limit for employees who are not in the C-suite, 55?
Depends on your skill set. ;-)
But yes, IBM will continue to have resource actions against older workers all while cleaning house.
Nothing new here.
I wonder if Bob Young sold off all his shares long ago or if he kept some on after he left Red Hat...
IBM has been desperately trying to ignore Microsoft's success for many years now and have made themselves increasingly irrelevant in the process. This is an attempt to buy relevance, but it doesn't fix IBM being IBM. Linux being what it is, imo everyone will simply move from Red Hat to an alternative Linux rather than have to buy support from IBM.
Not necessarily, if they play it right they could take over IBM from the inside - the board and bean counters would only find out when they were thrown out.
Sort of like when AOL bought Time/Warner, and a year later it was all T/W executives running the company, not AOL?
"Not necessarily, if they play it right they could take over IBM from the inside - the board and bean counters would only find out when they were thrown out."
You're looking at IBM as a technology company that will benefit from being run by people that understand technology.
IBM is a financial company that makes money from financing expensive legacy systems and service contracts. Software and hardware are just the bait on the hook.
So the question is why would IBM pay so much? Red Hat appears to be reasonably healthy (growing in all reported areas at around 10%-15%/year) but was valued around the $20B mark that appeared to be a fair assessment given there's no large pile of cash or other obvious value to unlock.
My suspicion is that IBM plan to hit all the third parties using Red Hat on their appliances with big subscription rises to squeeze out money in the short-to-mid term. I could be wrong but I think the majority of customers would look to move off Red Hat (we're already consolidating environments and pushing non-essential stuff to after the last Red Hat increases gave us a ~30% rise which resulted in a six figure subscription increases).
"Another major corporate splashes out a fortune on a star business only to find the clash of cultures destroys substantial value."
I'm seriously unsure they have any interest in the business, the product or the personnel - just the PR and the "market share"...
"And "Linux" only 6".
The word "linux" hasn't really ever been used commercially. IBM was rather instrumental in taking linux mainstream, or should I say mainframe, something that started in IBM Germany.
The only TV add I can remember about linux was the one IBM made, with that young kid, 20 years ago?.
Red Hat was of course my first linux in 98.
With now more than 260 comments I know I am not going to read them all, much because they will be very similar, and largely negative. Quite frankly could anybody mention a merger met with great applause. I am still searching, to no avail.
All the same, I wish them all the best, and linux will prevail regardless of how this works out.
I'm seriously unsure they have any interest in the business, the product or the personnel - just the PR and the "market share"
Read the briefs - the aim is clear, but neither business is hitting their targets. If they do not shape-up then there will be a shake-out.
Re: Redhat employees - get out now
Actually IBM culture was good until they splashed out on PwCc. That was the poison apple that destroyed both value and customer trust.
Sounds like a heritage IBMer who was in IGS. ;-)
Sorry, son, but you're dead wrong. IBM's culture was shit long before they acquired PWC, in fact it was the guys in PWC who actually got it, and knew how to be good consultants. I've worked with a couple of the PwC partners on deals, and then met some of the staff that they mentored a decade later on other proejcts. Definitely good people.
As someone who came in thru an acquisition... the stories I could tell you.
As someone who was in an overlay position that was matrix'd in to the sales organization I saw it all.
Posted Anon for all the obvious reasons.
"Sorry, son, but you're dead wrong."
I disagree. I worked for IBM back in the 90s, pre PwCC, and loved it. The company had a culture, an identity, innovation and creativity, and some very very talented people. And that was in the 90s - not exactly IBM's best time. My dad worked there from '72 until he retired in '89, and constantly reminisced what a wonderful career he'd had.
Not exactly true.
IBM will offer some key employees, back loaded retention packages.
IBM will not touch Red Hat for a couple of years and may keep Red Hat a separate company as a wholly owned subsidiary indefinitely.
(Yes I escaped from the borg after my gold plated handcuffs came off.)
Google created Alphabet as their holding company which helped create 'glass walls' between divisions which also helped reduce the threat of Government intervention and calling Google a monopoly ...
So there is a precedence also considering that Red Hat has its own strong brand ... don't want to weaken it.
A short list of IBM aquistions of previously successfully companies then went nowhere:
Encina, Rational , Informix, Greenplum,
Feel free to add to the list. Given past performance red had will be renamed Blue Shorts and disappear from view within two years.
Nah. Wait to see if an expected bidding war develops to run up the value of their stock options. I got a chunk of RH stock for my IRA (Individual Retirement Account) back when it was $6 per share, and am looking forward to see how much more it runs up for a while - already jumped from 116 just before the deal was announced this past weekend to around 170+ most of this following week, so biding my time. Just wish I had put more of my IRA funds into it back then....
honestly, MS would be fine. They're big into Linux and open source and still a heavily pro-engineering company.
Companies like Oracle and IBM are about nothing but making money. Which is why they're both going down the tubes. No-one who doesn't already have them goes near them.
> honestly, MS would be fine. They're big into Linux and open source and still a heavily pro-engineering company.
> Companies like Oracle and IBM are about nothing but making money. Which is why they're both going down the tubes. No-one who doesn't already have them goes near them.
Disagree - all three are about making money, and all three are 'into' Linux in some shape or form. The only difference that separates Microsoft from the other two is that it has an enormous and entrenched marketshare in consumer and enterprise client computing that the other two don't. The downside to MS grabbing RH is that it would further reduce the options available for commercially supported 'enterprise' OS vendors. Those tech big companies have too much power as it is.
The OS is from Linus and chums, Redhat adds a few storage bits and some Redhat logos and erm.......
From a customer standpoint the main thing RedHat adds is formal support. There are still a lot of companies who are uncomfortable deploying an OS that has product support only from StackExchange and web forums. This market is fairly insensitive to price, which is good for a company like RedHat. (Although there has been an exodus of higher education customers as the price has gone up; like Sun did back in the day, they've been squeezing out that market. Two campuses I've worked for have switched wholesale to CentOS.)
The other possibility is that the take-over will be contested given that there is a risk that IBM shareholders will reject the offer.
A business such as SoftBank Group may find it a better proposition than say some of it's more recent investments given that RedHat has now been put into play in the market.
"So what's next, MS hasn't got its UNIX yet. SUSE or Canonical?"
Now that you can run Linux apps under Windows without the Linux kernel I can't see why they would want to own a distribution. Microsoft can just assist in building userland installs of every key distro and sell it on the security, audit, integration and performance advantages of running it under all under the Windows kernel or hyper-v server.
IBM was already "working on Linux." For decades. With multiple hundreds of full-time Linux developers--more than any other corporate contributor--around the world. And not just on including IBM-centric function into Linux, but on mainstream community projects. There have been lots of Linux people in IBM since the early-90's.
How quickly they forget. (Or perhaps they were still at primary school? (Now I know what all the old men meant, when i was younger, when they kept exclaiming "I feel so OLD!")
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2001-12-09/big-blues-big-bet-on-free-software
If it were Micro-shaft, we could look forward to the 'Extinguish' part of 'Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, *EX-TER-MIN-ATE*' in a short period of time.
IBM is likely to put something into RH that they didn't have before: CASH
They are also likely to REMOVE some of the more irritating 'cultural' things, maybe even systemd and (on its way to becoming, if Ubuntu is any indication) 2D FLATSO gnome 3 [I still have hope!]
I can also see the possibility of IBM seriously considering a GENERAL USE LINUX DESKTOP to compete with Micro-shaft, even if it's only out of spite over the OS/2 vs Windows thing.
Too many people assume that "corporation" equals EVIL. You forget that you most likely work FOR a corporation, and that a corporation is PEOPLE. Many of those people have retirement funds with stock portfolios that include those "evil" corporations. Although some of them (Micro-shaft, Google, etc.) may be engaging in questionable and/or outright ILLEGAL and IMMORAL behaviors and policies, it's the people running the place, not the corporation itself, that are *EVIL*.
I am actually pretty happy IBM is doing this. I see it as a move in the right direction for Linux.
Imagine what could happen if GOOGLE purchased RH...
Damnit BB --- You're STEALING MY lowercase and UPPERCASE musings! How can ANYONE distinguish my writings form yours now??? To illustrate that I not-so-humbly DISAGREE that Microsoft is crappola, I must add in a defence of Microsoft by saying that Active Directory system is the BEST network shag-fest-supportting administration system out there --- BAR NONE !!!!
Being able to EASILY MAKE AND PUSH a single or multiple Group Policies from a SINGLE central server (or from my super-DUPER remote client station acting as the Enterprise Domain Admin) out to EVERY sub-server and client on a global basis, HAS NO EQUAL in Red Hat, SuSE or ANY OTHER FLAVOUR of Linux!!!! Yes! I'm biased because as a geek-head located but two hours drive from MS headquarters, I do prefer dealing with a more local company...BUT... I do see this acquisition of Red Hat by IBM as a tidal wave of destruction coming soon to the smaller shops who use RH for their internal systems, dev-ops and cloud-like servers.
IBM will KILL Red Hat in less than five years if they so much interfere with ANY employee functions and coder happiness...THEY WILL ALL LEAVE and there goes all of Red Hat's value and goodwill! IBM has killed so many companies in the 20 years (Lotus, PWC, etc) that I don't see anything good for current RH employees UNLESS you have stock which you can vest as soon as the deal goes through! I say to them RETIRE RICH WHILE YOU CAN !!!!
The question now, is WHAT COMES AFTER RED HAT?? --- Maybe this is the best news for Microsoft future growth since their own introduction of Active Directory and Azure! It ain't cheap to run an MS server system, but IT SURE IS EASY TO DO SO from an admin's perspective!
The ONLY THING GOOD about IBM's stock play for RH, is that IBM's Power-9 and Power-10 CPU architectures will FINALLY be having a good look over from the DEV-OPS community. Those CPU's ARE MUCH SUPERIOR to INTEL/AMD. If ONLY MS would put Windows 2016/1019 on those CPU's!!!
Looking at those figures, it would make more sense for redhat to buy ibm.
Either you are missing sarcasm tags or you and I must be reading different numbers.
IBM $79b revenue vs RedHad $2.9b revenue, 3.6% the revenue of IBM.
IBM profits $5.8b (would have been $12.9b if they didn't have a one-off write-down) vs RedHat $259m, 4.4% of IBM's profits.
So IBM has 29 times more revenue and 22 times greater profits, and you think RedHat should have bought IBM?
"Just compare the share price of RH v IBM"
You would do better to look at the execution on the numbers - RedHat is not hitting it's targets and there are signs of trouble. These two businesses were both looking for a prop and the RedHat shareholders are getting out while the business is near it's peak.
doubtful. I think the 'culture' that produced things *LIKE* systemd aren't in line with IBM's way of doing things...
IBM really is about giving customers what they want. If customers DO NOT WANT systemd, they won't have to use it when IBM gets its way.
Think "sales and marketing" meets "engineering". The reality is that engineering needs sales/marketing, even if they're irritating as hell and drive the process too often, because it's the CUSTOMERS, and not the whims/wishes/unicorns-and-rainbows of the engineering team that get the development time assigned. no more "because we *FEEL* and people MUST accept it" (the attitude behind things *LIKE* systemd and gnome 3) is what I expect in the future... from IBM's hand in the mix.
After all - IBM has invested their future in Linux. No doubt they want THAT to continue.
The early risers (if not them then the after-hours guys) will suck up all the Red Hat stock they can and sell about the time the max buyout price is met. IBM.. might rise a bit at this news.
If the past is any indicator, all that will be left holding either companies stocks in a week will be the suckers who either believe their stock will increase in price or will be selling short.
But where do you invest your money now?
In the corporate lifecycle, small companies innovate and grow (and a lot fail). Medium sized companies grow and are usually acquired by lard-arse corporates. Lard arsed corporates have to keep buying medium sized companies to restore revenue lost by their lack of innovation and agility. And half of the money is made by buyouts, half by growth - to double up you need to back the buyout material.
Small companies can offer much better returns, but much higher risk. I'd have thought you need to invest in a portfolio of mid-sized tech companies, carefully avoiding the obvious dogs, and those whose business model you don't understand (because in that situations, you're probably right, and they don't have a sustainable business model).
But each to their own. You might want to invest again in large but sub-corporate businesses like IBM and RedHat. But pick carefully, because making money there is a lot harder - if the opportunity is obvious, then the big investors will already have bid the price too high to offer the small guy any return.
And something else to consider is the macro-economics: Rising US interest rates, trade wars, Brexit, the risk of a medium term equity bear market.
But where do you invest your money now?
Short duration treasuries. We are exiting "return on capital"- and entering "return of capital"- territory. The FED is raising and chaotic Brexit is looming, Volatility is growing, Indexes are up but underlying market stocks are "rotting" -> The odds of a 30% down month are basically getting better and better.
If one is getting bored and feeling lucky, there is:
BEAR x2 (or x3) certificates on an Index that is about to go "Splat!". Buy some on the coming retrace back up to moving average 200 days range for GDAXI or the FTSE, or a unicorn stock, or, whatever there is available from your local Fancy Lottery Ticket Pusher.
Just keep it small, there is risk of 100% capital loss on these things.
Quite a lot of the "OMG" moments rests on three assumptions:
- Red Hat is 100% brilliant and speckless
- IBM is beyond hope and unchangeable
- This is a hostile takeover
I beg to differ on all counts. Call me beyond hope myself because of my optimism, but I do think what IBM bought most is a way to run a business. RH is just too big to be borged into a failing giant without leavinf quite a substantial mark.
I beg to differ on all counts.
Note: I didn't downvote you, its a valid argument. I can understand why you think that, because I'm in the minority that think the IBM "bear" case is overdone. They've been cleaning their stables for some years now, and that means dropping quite a lot of low margin business, and seeing the topline shrink. That attracts a lot of criticism, although it is good business sense.
But I do beg to differ about the optimism, because, as my boss likes to quote, "culture eats strategy for breakfast". And (speaking as a strategist) that's 100% true, and 150% true when doing M&A. So the problem is that IBM have bought a business whose competencies and success factors differ from the IBM core. Its culture is radically different, and incompatible with IBM. Many of its best employees will be hostile to IBM. RedHat will be borged, and it will leave quite a mark. A bit like Shoemaker-Levi did on Jupiter. Likewise there will be lots of turbulence, but it won't endure, and at the end of it all the gas giant will be unchanged (just a bit poorer). And just like a gas giant, IBM can be considered a failed star.
At a premium of 63% I'm not going to blame Red Hat for taking that offer. That won't stop me feeling some level of annoyance when the inevitable collapse in product quality hits and we have to waste a year migrating everything off Blue Hat Enterprise Linux For The Hybrid Cloud Featuring Watson Cognitive Social Analytics
You will be (mostly) missed.
will sway my vote to Yes. That will fund my buying a Tesla Model 3 even after paying the CGT on the deal as long as I don't end up getting IBM stock which IMHO is worthless junk.
I shall have to wait for the offer details to come through but RH has been a juicy target for some years whih is why I bought a lot of stock in 2014 and more in 2016.
Large American corporation is moving very slowly due to large amounts of accreted lead.
American corporate sees dirigible, thinks "that's going much faster than we are."
American corporate buys dirigible and attaches it by cable so it can pull against the lead.
American corporate wonders why dirigible has stopped going anywhere.
Scientific Linux is a good idea in theory, dreadful in practice.
The idea of a research/academic-software-focused distro is a good one: unfortunately (I say unfortunately, but it's certainly what I would do myself), increasing numbers of researchers are now developing their pet projects on Debian or Ubuntu, and so therefore often only make .deb packages available.
Anyone who has had any involvement in research software knows that if you find yourself in the position of needing to compile someone else's pet project from source, you are often in for an even more bumpy ride than usual.
And the lack of compatible RPM packages just encourages more and more researchers to go where the packages (and the free-ness) are, namely Debian and friends, which continue to gather momentum, while Red Hat continues to stagnate.
Red Hat may be very stable for running servers (as long as you don't need anything reasonably new (not bleeding edge, but at least newer than three years old)), but I have never really seen the attraction in it myself (especially as there isn't much of a "community" feeling around it, as its commercial focus gets in the way).
IBM is possibly the most anti-FOSS company in the world today. Their absolute hatred of the GPL, everything. IBM is completely patent centric. They are preparing for the next true global war which they believe will be fought on top of proprietary closed technology and the winner will be the company with the most patents. There were days that I actually admired the folks at Red Hat, they have now revealed their true nature.
If Trump walks away from the WTO, there go US patents in much of the world. It'll be back to the Cold War era when the USSR and China ignored US IP. Except this time, the power of the anti-US side will be much greater. Governments of other countries will have to take sides.
Currently the US doesn't control ARM and Huawei is heading to be a full stack company. Nice little tech sector you got there, US, wouldn't want anything to happen to it. Oh, my brother's clumsy, he knocked over your Apple. Never mind, for only two trillion dollars and your firstborn you can stay in business...patents will have to go, of course.
"Then judging by the news of all the IP theft going on, the Cold War never ended."
You're not entirely right.
During the Cold War, the USSR and China ignored patents because it was good Communist doctrine that all ideas belonged to the proletariat.
Since the Cold War, they ignore patents because it's good capitalist doctrine to pinch anything that is not nailed down.
During the 19th century US industrial growth was assisted by a general ignoring of other countries' patents and copyrights. This changed rapidly once the US had its own to protect. It's just part of the way things are.
IBM is possibly the most anti-FOSS company in the world today. Their absolute hatred of the GPL, everything.
Just because one hates the GPL doesn't make one anti-open source, but even that claim isn't true. IBM was making code open source before the term was even coined. Hence we got Apache, Postfix and REXX and a heap of other goodies. It was also one of the first companies to make significant contributions to Linux.
The real issue is that for seveal years IBM has been looking for a new corporate strategy and has thrown a lot of people under the bus on the way. It's difficult to see this purchase, for which they have significantly overpaid (well over 10 x revenues) brining the breakthrough.
Apache & Postfix are from IBM?
I couldn't swear it but I'm pretty sure both were released as "EWS" and IBM may even have had a hand in setting up the Apache Foundation. It did have a fine tradition of releasing stuff it didn't intend to pursue commercially: EWS was all about absolving IBM of any liability.
I think the problem now is that just does a lot less research and is less savvy than, say Google, in getting developers to work on Watson than TensorFlow.
I used to be a Solaris admin. Now I am a linux admin in a red hat shop. Sun was bought by Oracle and more or less died a death. Will the same happen now? I know that Sun and RH are _very_ differeht beasts but I am thinking that now is the time to stop playing on the merry go round called systems administration.
Solaris worked on proprietary hardware for alot of it's life.
Solaris 2 has been available on standard x86 hardware since 1993, only a few months after it was released for SPARC (which is not proprietary, by the way, it's an open architecture).
That incidentally makes it about the same age as Red Hat.
As I recall, Sun killed the x86 version to boost sales of their Cobalt Linux.
It did boost sales of Linux alright - SuSE Linux, RedHat Linux . . .
Cobalt Linux died, Sun revived x86 and then shot themselves in the other foot by charging for patches when others were free.
As I recall, Sun killed the x86 version to boost sales of their Cobalt Linux.
Not really That was how some papers spun it back around 2002 with Solaris 9, but internally (I worked on Solaris x86 projects) that puzzled people, because we didn't see things change much. Some of the download options for general use changed, IIRC, which caused confusion. Solaris 2.0 came out on SPARC, 2.1-2.3 had an x86 fork, for 2.4 the fork rejoined to a common code base, and it's been like that ever since. There was a 2.5.1 offshoot for PowerPC that went nowhere, though.
Dear Red Hatters, welcome to the world of battery hens, all clucking and clicking away to produce the elusive golden egg while the axe looms over their heads. Even if your mental health survives, you will become chicken feed by the time you are middle aged. IBM doesn't have a heart; get out while you can. Follow the example of IBMers in Australia who are jumping ship in their droves, leaving behind a crippled, demoralised workforce. Don't become a Mad Hatter.
RH CDs got my first Linux PCs up. Really liked the earlier versions before I found the one or two true Linices. Debian and flavour of week. :-) I suspect that IBM will also continue lowering its AIX sales push in favour of RH derived linux. The loss of AIX will be a lot of nails in the coffin of a truly flexible commercial Unix. That loss will have devastating effects on whats left of IBMs future.
OTOH, Devuan may benefit which is a benefit. Centos may have an interesting time dealing with IBM though.
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It has been nice to know you. Itsy Bitsy Morons will the death of you by sheer incompetence and negligence.
I wonder what will happen with Fedora and Centos going forward as I doubt Ginni will understand the importance of the projects to the Red Hat ecosystem. They both serve very good outreach roles to the wider Linux community who would normally not use Red Hat.
@A_Yank_Lurker
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Yup!! I'm f**ked! I've used RedHat since 1999 -- RH5.2 through RH9, then Fedora Core 5 to F28, which I'm using to write this.
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The retail RH releases were excellent, particularly RH9. Fedora has been up and down, but recent releases (F24 and up) have all been solid. It says something for the RedHat crew that I've been able to to everything I needed to do with a very low (personal) maintenance load, even though Fedora is branded as "bleeding edge".
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I await the future of RedHat and Fedora with extreme trepidation. Is this the end of my twenty year relationship? I hope not......
I was part of a decent sized acquisition they did. Sales was all gone or left within 3 months, then core founders, then engineering...ibm came in and crushed culture and business. Revenues dropped and I was on many calls where “we thought you were dead” was how the things started. I left after trying to find an envelope to mail out some customer assets in. Was told no more local office supplies but I could request one via online work order. I say screw this and left. Should have started looking after the announcement but gave it time. Never again. Same promises and press releases over a decade later. Things will change dramatically, you will assimilate, innovation is tangled with arrogant bureaucracy, and the thing you loved about your company dies. The former ceo and founders will stay on for a year then leave. Sorry for those that wanted good news.
As to the redhat product and portfolio, it will stall on any innovation for years. Support for customers will dwindle slowly. New features micromanaged. Get ready for difficult contracting and IBM client execs holding deals hostage unless you buy other ibm products and services. I just don’t know where this ends well for RHEL shops.
IBM already had access to Red Hat's patents, including for patent defence purposes. Look up "open innovation network".
This acquisition is about: (1) IBM needing growth, or at least a plausible scenario for growth. (2) Red Hat wanting an easy expansion of its sales channels, again for growth. (3) Red Hat stockholders being given an offer they can't refuse.
This acquisition is not about: cultural change at IBM. Which is why the acquisition will 'fail'. The bottom line is that engineering matters at the moment (see: Google, Amazon), and IBM sacked their engineering culture across the past two decades. To be successful IBM need to get that culture back, and acquiring Red Hat gives IBM the opportunity to create a product-building, client-service culture within IBM. Except that IBM aren't taking the opportunity, so there's a large risk the reverse will happen -- the acquisition will destroy Red Hat's engineering- and service-oriented culture.
about the supposedly irrelevant hugely profitable tech company IBM, there are at least a few potentially intriguing possibilities that spring to mind from this significantly expensive takeover.
What about IBM deciding to roll over some of the more impressive and efficient capabilities of AIX into the open source Linux in order to make it even more attractive and useful? Some of their other closely intertwined products too? What if they have projects with seriously viable or at least valuable potential in the desktop or mobile arenas? There's some big fish that could be worried by questions like these, and companies driven back towards IBM products and services if traction gets gained. I have no opinion on whether such a strategy could work or not over time, but the scale of this shows that at least an awful lot of time will have been devoted to such discussions.
In the meantime, the Red Hat staff can get used to the idea of writing Redbooks.
AIX Features that have no common Linux equivalent.
Live OS upgrades
Active Memory Expansion (Inline memory compression)
Active Memory Sharing (connect swap device to hypervisor and let OS overcommit memory)
Memory De-duplication
Great Cohesive admin framework
ASO/DSO (automatically tune the operating system for the workload)
Workload Partitions
Suspend / Resume
Great Filesystem (JFS2) and volume manager
"ODM" as opposed to DevFS
Transactional Memory
Support for CPU embedded accelerators
Memory Protection Keys
etc..
etc..
Live OS upgrades -- Live Patching for kernel, userspace is a WIP and high risk
Active Memory Expansion -- zswap depending on exact requirements
Active Memory Sharing -- Not sure, could be done with swap files depending on requirements
Memory De-duplication -- KSM for anonymous, file-backed is a mixed bag
Great Cohesive admin framework -- undefined what this means exactly but admittedly how to tune certain parameters lacks consistency
ASO/DSO -- tuned but by and large, live monitoring for automatic tuning goes to hell if the workload does not behave as expected
Workload Partitions -- cgroups, capabilities and semantics of the isolation varies depending on the resource so it does depend on requirements
Suspend / Resume -- close the laptop lid, otherwise depends on the hardware and whether the firmware can handle being fully suspended or not.
Great Filesystem (JFS2) and volume manager -- variety of choices, depends on requirements
"ODM" as opposed to DevFS -- devfs hasn't used in years
Transactional Memory -- supported but hardware support has been iffy so while the software can use it, the hardware does not always behave correctly or gets disabled in a microcode update
Support for CPU embedded accelerators -- driver-specific so depends on whether you mean something ppc64 specific or a missing driver for an x86 accelerator
Memory Protection Keys -- already there
There are things that AIX does better due to the tight integration with hardware and the ability to always control the entire software stack but a number of the "enterprise" features you claim are missing do exist albeit with different terminology and sometimes capabilities. Often, the priority that support is improved depends on how many customers actually request it as opposed to just filling out checkboxes that sound Enterprisy
Linux has long had pretty much everything you say it doesn't:
Live OS upgrades: KSplice has been around for a decade.
Inline memory compression: Compcache / zram has been around for a decade, also.
Hypervisor overcommit memory: KVM has had over-commit for at least a decade, Xen even longer. VMware longer still.
ASO/DSO (automatically tune the operating system: Linux systems need vastly less (if any) tuning of parameters, compared to traditional crufty Unix systems.
Workload Partitions: Linux has rather advanced containers in OpenVZ/LXC/Xen for over a decade.
Suspend / Resume: KVM/LXC/etc. suspend / resume just fine.
@ST. Let me count the ways...
On line and in use file system resizing, Had this for decades in some form. In use swap partition changes Brilliant visualization via the RH based hypervisor. Change memory or CPU allocation on the fly. Set up pools of memory and CPU to allow resources to be dynamically re-allocated within pool limits on as needed basis among virtual servers. Online patching. ie no required reboots. Storage virtualisation good but everyone has that now via storage fabrics. None of this matters as AIX sys-admins of my acquaintance agree IBM wants to kill AIX and use Linux only. Cost cutting perhaps or fools seldom differ ? The best argument I can find is that migration costs between OS, let alone hardware is always stupendous, especially if IBM is involved.
Granted the capabilities of AIX are now simulated in the "cloud" for basic X86 the AIX advantage is minimal for all but biggest organisations. However those really big orgs don't change basic infrastructure lightly or easily.
This could be interesting: will the systemd kraken manage to wrap its tentacles around the big blue container ship and bring it to a halt, or will the container ship turn out to be well armed and fatally harpoon the kraken (causing much rejoicing in the rest of the Linux world)?
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I presume they were waiting to see what happened to Solaris. When Oracle bought Sun (presumably the only other company who might have bought them was IBM) there were really three enterprise unixoid platforms: Solaris, AIX and RHEL (there were some smaller ones and some which were clearly dying like HPUX). It seemed likely at the time, but not yet certain, that Solaris was going to die (I worked for Sun at the time this happened and that was my opinion anyway). If Solaris did die, then if one company owned both AIX and RHEL then that company would own the enterprise unixoid market. If Solaris didn't die on the other hand then RHEL would be a lot less valuable to IBM as there would be meaningful competition. So, obviously, they waited to see what would happen.
Well, Solaris is perhaps not technically quite dead yet but certainly is moribund, and IBM now owns both AIX and RHEL & hence the enterprise unixoid market. As an interesting side-note, unless Oracle can keep Solaris on life-support this means that IBM own all-but own Oracle's OS as well ('Oracle Linux' is RHEL with, optionally, some of their own additions to the kernel).
According to everything I've been reading--for YEARS--from the world's second-biggest blow-hard and grandstander from South Africa, is that Ubuntu is more profitable, much more beloved, head-and-shoulders bigger, and much more important than Red Hat.
IBM, you just don't pay attention to the really important stuff. You don't listen to the REALLY VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE. If you want to know how important this person is, just ask him.
You could have had Ubuntu.
Jerks.
Now it looks like Canonical will win, from just being the last one standing.
You're forgetting about SUSE. RedHat-like, yet independent from it. Has or is affiliated with similar server products you would run on those systems, and even originated some of those products/projects you would now associate with RH or Ubuntu. Has more reputation as a "server" distribution than Ubuntu does.
IBM must be borrowing a lot of cash to fund the acquisition. At last count it had about $12B in the bank... https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/ibm/financials/balance-sheet.
Unlike everyone else - https://www.thestreet.com/story/14513643/1/apple-microsoft-google-are-sitting-on-crazy-amounts-of-cash.html
[Freddellmeister] "Finally, now IBM can starve out the leech Oracle Linux and kill exadata for good. FTW"
Or... finally, Oracle can kill Oracle Linux and move ExaData to Solaris 11, with it's GNU User Land that feels like Linux.
Oracle offered Intel based Solaris 11 Storage Heads and SPARC Solaris 11 SuperCluster for a very long time!
Looking at the Red Hat numbers, I would not want to be an existing IBM share-holder this morning; both companies missing market expectations and in need of each other to get out of the rut.
It is going to take a lot of effort to make that 63% premium pay-off. If it does not pay-off pretty quickly, the existing RedHat leadership with gone in 18 months.
P.S.
Apparently this is going to be financed by a mixture of cash and debt - increasing IBM's existing debt by nearly 50%. Possible credit rating downgrade on the way?
Looking at the Red Hat numbers, I would not want to be an existing IBM share-holder this morning; both companies missing market expectations and in need of each other to get out of the rut.
RH missing market expectations? RH had made reasonable projections, and in fact *exceeded* those projections. They didn't over-estimate and then fail to meet their targets. The market only thinks RH didn't "meet expectations" because they didn't exceed their projections by the percentage the market thought they should have.
Something's wrong when you do *more* than you said you would, and people *still* complain you didn't do enough.
As soon as they have a minimum of experience with the terrible IBM change management processes, the many layers of bureocracy and management involved and the zero or negative value they add to anything at all.
IBM is a shinking ship, the only question being how long it will take to happen. Anyone thinkin RH has any future other than languish and disappear under IBM management is dellusional. Or a IBM stock owner.
I'm still trying to figure out "why" they bought Red hat.
The only thing my not insignificant google trawling can find me is that Red Hat sell to the likes of Microsoft and google - now, that *is* interesting. IBM seem to be saying that they can't compete directly but they will sell upwards to their overlords - no ?
As far as I can tell, it is be part of IBM's cloud (or hybrid cloud) strategy. RH have become/are becoming increasingly successful in this arena.
If I was being cynical, I would also say that it will enable IBM to put the RH brand and appropriate open source soundbites on the table for deal-making and sales with or without the RH workforce and philosophy. Also, RH's subscription-base must figure greatly here - a list of perfect customers ripe for "upselling".
I'm fairly convinced that it's because of who uses RedHat. Certainly a lot of financial institutions do, they're in the market for commercial support (the OS cost itself is irrelevant). You can tell this by looking at the prices RedHat were charging for RedHat MRG - beloved by the high speed share traders. To say eye-watering, PER ANNUM too, is an understatement. You'd have to have got deep pockets before such prices became ignorable.
IBM is a business services company that just happens to make hardware and write OSes. RedHat has a lot of customers interested in business services. The ones I think who will be kicking themselves are Hewlett Packard (or whatever they're called these days).
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"I'm still trying to figure out "why" they bought Red hat."
What they say? It somehow helps them with cloud. Doesn't sound like much money there - certainly not enough to justify the significant increase in debt (~US$17B).
What could it be then? Well RedHat pushed up support prices and their customers didn't squeal much. A lot of those big enterprise customers moved from expensive hardware/expensive OS support over the last ten years to x86 with much cheaper OS support so there's plenty of scope for squeezing more.
IBMer thinks: "I don't like systemd. If I were in charge, I could close it down".
Pauses. Reaches for their Internal Memo pad (for this is IBM afterall), and sharpens their best, most impressive pencil.
Next thing we know it's giga-cheque books at dawn, and some gleeful looking IBM wonk is in charge of systemd.
Seriously though, this does mean that IBM will also control the CentOS project. Nothing particularly wrong with that in my view, IBM have been good friends to Linux over the decades, but it is a whole hunk of consolidation of a sort in the market.
I remember similar things being said about Lotus, when all it turned out they really wanted was the replication technology from Notes to shove into DB2. Everything else was allowed to wither on the vine.
Same will happen here - destroy the corporate culture, ruin the business so they can get - what, exactly?
PS: could we have a grim reaper icon? I mean, it is nearly Halloween after all...
Not exactly accurate. Big Blue promoted the sh*t out of Notes, required all its partners to use Notes to do business with IBM divisions, and generally caused the software to live on a decade longer than it should have. The big differences are that RHEL and associated products are open source and their devs at the center of the Linux universe. Lotus was an innovative company, but not an industry leader, and its tech was the classic walled garden. It had nothing like the influence RHAT does through its employees involvement in the oss stack.
That said, bean counters and egomaniacal execs being what they are, if the RHATters don't wind up taking over IBM a la TW/AOL in a very short time then this could be a very sad end to a good company. What was it that Feynman said? "Nature cannot be fooled."
Competence cannot be faked.
At least not for very long.
This has very little to do with Linux. IBM has realised there is enough of a market for on-prem and hybrid cloud and their current range just doesn't cut it. MS have delayed (again) with on prem azure and OpenShift is the most mature product out there and they have windows in a container support coming soon.
Of course the real question is how badly with they f**k it up or if they will leave Redhat to continue developing their products instead of trying to do some half arsed integration.
Plus of course getting rid of dinosaur IT and injecting fresh blood who don't have huge pension commitments will help.
Congrats Red Hat. You are marrying a girl with 80B in debt that will be more than 3x leveraged soon and will have their credit rating downgraded to a BB or less after this and that means creditors will start charging substantially more interest on that 80B in debt you just married.
Hope you like beans and toast because you will never see steaks again, and don’t ever plan on taking any vacations for the rest of your life. Those days are over.
Likely this will just end up killing both of the companies in a massive debt spiral in pretty quick time but, have fun you newlyweds.
"Oh, WebSphere and DB2 are still a thing," I recently blurted out in an interview for a job I didn't get. Fact is that IBM are sitting on a bunch of legacy tech that makes your average forward looking engineer run a mile. Customers also tend to be looking for something a little more modern. Perhaps the Red Hat buy out is best viewed through the prism of that thinking?
IBM needs to be very careful with the Red-hatters during the blue-washing process else they will lose them. Good luck to the Red-hatters with the IBM TEA system and having to pay high prices for coffee. I can foresee a huge culture shock coming and IBM must reconsider their standard integration process else this will be a flop.
One of the most surprising things is just how big IBM still are! I so rarely come across them I consider them fairly irrelevant these days, yet they're still pretty massive! I don't even know what they really do any more (I used to work for them). This is a ballsy move but as many people have mentioned, 2 companies from very different worlds!
This is smart for a few reasons - A) access to a whole new base of customers IBM may not have had access to. Can sell their watson, blockchain, etc new emerging products. B) can leverage red hat tech for free, especially in their BlueMix cloud offerings like Ansible, etc. Middleware.I agree, 34 billion for 2-3 billion revenue is...head scratching. But per above, there are some huge discrete benefits.
As for the culture and what will happen to Red Hat... oh boy. lets get the popcorn out.
"can leverage red hat tech for free..."
Nothing is free. Not now, not ever. If IBM is true to form, transfer prices for support, services, subscription fees and all the rest between Red Hat and IBM will be at the same prices they were before this outrage. IBM doesn't fuck anybody more than it does internally. Between departments, divisions--with a healthy uplift going to the "procurement" department for it's "services."
The way IBM does "costing" and "pricing" is totally fucking outrageous. One internal uplift after another, plus an adder in case our forecast is wrong, and nothing ever succeeds. Once these internal processes infect the Red Hat operation (not to mention travel rules, no raises for years, no project money, no budgets for any departmental purposes, and consolidation of all advertising and promotion to Armonk, and Red Hat will be road kill--a stain on the highway.
I've tried to make Linux my everyday OS a few times but it always becomes a dead end deal, with the vague fix seeming to be...reinstall everything. Hmmmmm.
Anyway, I understand Red Hat creates FREE software, but charges money to make it work for you. A service. Devious if you think about it. And from my experience likely to generate quite a bit of profit.
I hope it works out for everyone concerned.
I think that will depend on how Linux works.
I've tried to make Linux my everyday OS a few times but it always becomes a dead end deal, with the vague fix seeming to be...reinstall everything. Hmmmmm.
Well, they have been trying to emulate more popular desktop OSes... they'll probably have succeeded when you need to reboot three times to install a sequence of updates and then make random updates to the registry before reinstalling everything anyway.
There was a time when the only changes that required a reboot to apply were non-module kernel changes and possibly libc.
As for the title, much easier to just run as admin all the time, amirite!?
She does seem to manage IBM for financial appearance rather than substantive product. Then one day she may simply say, 'I quit', and walk off stage with a few hundred million bucks. Nice work if you can get it. The best part is no accountability for failure. That's America these days.
A company prone to vendor lock-in buying one of the biggest open source companies on the market. What's worse is that in some niches there are few alternatives. This is really what antitrust authorities should look into, but I suspect that they will simply gloss over these issues.
Red Hat will be a distant memory in a few years as it gets absorbed by the abhorrent IBM culture and its bones picked clean by the IBM beancounters. Nothing good ever happens to a company bought by IBM.
I worked as a contractor for IBM's IGS division in the late '90s and early 2000s at their third biggest customer, and even then, IBM was doing their best to demoralize their staff (and contractors) and annoy their customers as much as possible!
Some examples:
The on-site IBM employees (and contractors) had to use Lotus Notes for email. That was probably the worst piece of software I have ever used - I think baboons on drugs could have done a better design job. IBM set up a T1 (1.54 Mbps) link between the customer and the local IBM hub for email, etc. It sounds great until you realize there were over 150 people involved and due to the settings of Notes replication, it could often take over an hour to actually download email to read.
To do my job I needed to install some IBM software. My PC did not have enough disk space for this software as well as the other software I needed. Rather than buy me a bigger hard disk I had to spend 8 hours a week installing and reinstalling software to do my job.
I waited three months for a $50 stick of memory to be approved. When it finally arrived my machine had been changed out (due to a new customer project) and the memory was not compatible! Since I worked on a lot of projects I often had machines supplied by the customer on my desk. So, I would use one of these as my personal PC and would get an upgrade when the next project started!
I was told I could not be supplied with a laptop or desktop from IBM as they were too expensive (my IBM division did not want to spend money on anything). IBM charged themselves 3x the actual price to customers for their ThinkPads at the time! This meant that I never had a laptop or desktop PC from IBM in the 8 years I worked there. If it wasn't for the project work I did I would not have had a PC to work on!
IBM has many strange and weird processes that allow them to circumvent the contract they have with their preferred contractor companies. This meant that for a number of years I ended up getting a pay cut. What was strange is that every single time I got a pay cut, IBM would then announce that they had bought a new company! I would have quit long before I did, but I was tied to them while waiting for my Green Card to be approved. I know that raises are few in the current IBM for normal employees and that IBM always pleads poverty for any employee request. Yet, they somehow manage to pay billions of dollars for a new company. Strange that, isn't it?
Eventually I was approved to get a laptop and excitedly watched it move slowly through the delivery system. I got confused when it was reported as delivered to Ohio rather than my work (not in Ohio). After some careful searching I discovered that my manager and his wife both worked for IBM from their home in, yes you can guess, Ohio. It looked like he had redirected my new laptop for his own use and most likely was going to send me his old one and claim it was a new one. I never got the chance to confront him about it, though, as IBM lost the contract with the customer that month and before the laptop should have arrived IBM was out! I moved to the company that had won the contract and regret not having the chance to tell that IBM manager what I thought about him and where he could stick the new laptop.
After that experience I decided to never work for them in any capacity ever again. I feel pity for the current Red Hat employees and my only advice to them is to get out while they can.
I sense that a global effort is ongoing to shutdown open source software by brute force. First, the enforcement of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by ICANN.org to enable untraceable takeovers of domains. Microsoft buying github. Linus Torvalds forced out of his own Linux kernel project because of the Code of Conduct and now IBM buying RedHat. I wrote the following at https://lulz.com/linux-devs-threaten-killswitch-coc-controversy-1252/ "Torvalds should lawyer up. The problems are the large IT Tech firms who platinum donated all over the place in Open Source land. When IBM donated with 1 billion USD to Linux in 2000 https://itsfoss.com/ibm-invest-1-billion-linux/ a friend who vehemently was against the GPL and what Torvalds was doing, told me that in due time OSS would simply just go away.
These Community Organizers, not Coders per se, are on a mission to overtake and control the Linux Foundation, and if they can’t, will search and destroy all of it, even if it destroys themselves. Coraline is merely a expendable pion here. Torvalds is now facing unjust confrontations and charges resembling the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Looking at the CoC document it even might have been written by a Google executive, who themselves currently are facing serious charges and lawsuits from their own Code of Conduct. See theintercept.com, their leaked video the day after the election of 2016. They will do anything to pursue this. However to pursue a personal bias or agenda furnishing enactments or acts such as to, omit contradicting facts (code), commit perjury, attend riots and harassments, cleanse Internet archives and search engines of exculpatory evidence and ultimately hire hit-men to exterminate witnesses of truth (developers), in an attempt to elevate bias as fabricated fact (code) are crimes and should be prosecuted accordingly."
Dunno about most of your points, but there is a big difference between Linus' well-documented vitriolic outbursts online, and the overblown mess of "she said"-"he said" disputed memories (35 years ago) of Ford and Kavanaugh. Linus is supposedly coming "back to work".
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