Re: "they will buy a lot of talent."
"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.