IBM to buy Red Hat

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redlined

Re: IBM to buy Red Hat

Post by redlined »

one good thing springs to mind: Bruce Schneier 8)

(aka- the Chuck Norris of computing security:)
michael louwe

Re: IBM to buy Red Hat

Post by michael louwe »

If Google or Amazon acquires Canonical Inc/Ubuntu, that will be icing on the cake for Linux users.

Imagine one day, consumers and companies will have the "difficult" choice of installing free Ubuntu/Ubuntu Server or free Fedora/CentOS/RHEL, ie no more Win 10 Home/Pro/Ent and MacOS.
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P S - If so, all the LM developers will be hired/"absorbed" into the expanded Ubuntu team.
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Re: IBM to buy Red Hat

Post by Spearmint2 »

xenopeek wrote: Mon Oct 29, 2018 3:24 pm There's no pressure to sell. The US has seen an acceleration of acquisition activity in 2018 in both number of deals and size of transactions. Technology acquisitions are on trend right now. Sounds like what's happening here. That said, there might be parties interested in purchasing Canonical. Don't know if you can pressure a private company.

Check today's stock price on Red Hat. Up over 40%
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Re: IBM to buy Red Hat

Post by xenopeek »

It went up from $ 119 to $ 169 today. But the acquisition bid is for $ 190 so that's not surprising. IBM valued Red Hat 60% above its market cap.
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Re: IBM to buy Red Hat

Post by trytip »

i found this cool video on YouTube about this subject :mrgreen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLUkgRAy_Vo
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Re: IBM to buy Red Hat

Post by xenopeek »

This interview with a Red Hat person we all know is moving: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
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Re: IBM to buy Red Hat

Post by KBD47 »

xenopeek wrote: Mon Oct 29, 2018 6:01 pm It went up from $ 119 to $ 169 today. But the acquisition bid is for $ 190 so that's not surprising. IBM valued Red Hat 60% above its market cap.
Ubuntu is headed for an IPO according to Shuttleworth. Anyone offers them above their share price--like with Redhat--Ubuntu will sell.
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Re: IBM to buy Red Hat

Post by BG405 »

michael louwe wrote: Mon Oct 29, 2018 4:22 pm If Google or Amazon acquires Canonical Inc/Ubuntu, that will be icing on the cake for Linux users.
If Google bought Canonical I'd be off like a shot. I suspect I'm not the only one.
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Re: IBM to buy Red Hat

Post by xenopeek »

Mark Shuttleworth's statement on the acquisition: https://blog.ubuntu.com/2018/10/30/stat ... of-red-hat

Giving a nod to all Red Hat did for open source. Primarily showing how Ubuntu is better than Red Hat in the cloud domain. With remarkable constraint he only used the word cloud 3 times :)
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michael louwe

Re: IBM to buy Red Hat

Post by michael louwe »

BG405 wrote: Tue Oct 30, 2018 9:48 am If Google bought Canonical I'd be off like a shot. I suspect I'm not the only one.
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If such a scenario plays out, ie users will have the "difficult" choice of running Google-Ubuntu or IBM-Red Hat, ie no more M$-Win-10 and Apple-MacOS, I would hope that both Google and IBM will compete and sell their OSes at about US$20 per license, whether Retail or OEM licenses.
....... IOW Google-Ubuntu will not have forced Telemetry and Data collection, like what Canonical-Ubuntu is today since Google will be getting revenue from the sale of Ubuntu licenses = no need to rely on ad revenue. Of course, Google-Ubuntu users who want to use a Digital Assistant and AI will need to enable Telemetry and Data collection. Google-Ubuntu will =/= Google-Android or Google-Chrome-OS.

Presently, M$ sells non-transferable Win 10 Home OEM licenses at about US$30 each.
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Re: IBM to buy Red Hat

Post by BigEasy »

michael louwe wrote: Tue Oct 30, 2018 1:49 pm If such a scenario plays out, ie users will have the "difficult" choice of running Google-Ubuntu or IBM-Red Hat, ie no more M$-Win-10 and Apple-MacOS, I would hope that both Google and IBM will compete and sell their OSes at about US$20 per license, whether Retail or OEM licenses.
....... IOW Google-Ubuntu will not have forced Telemetry and Data collection, like what Canonical-Ubuntu is today since Google will be getting revenue from the sale of Ubuntu licenses = no need to rely on ad revenue. Of course, Google-Ubuntu users who want to use a Digital Assistant and AI will need to enable Telemetry and Data collection. Google-Ubuntu will =/= Google-Android or Google-Chrome-OS.

Presently, M$ sells non-transferable Win 10 Home OEM licenses at about US$30 each.
Of course, after installation Google-Ubuntu you expect to see the complete set of applications. Everything for $20. Just interesting what does think for example Mozilla about that?
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michael louwe

Re: IBM to buy Red Hat

Post by michael louwe »

BigEasy wrote: Tue Oct 30, 2018 2:36 pm Of course, after installation Google-Ubuntu you expect to see the complete set of applications. Everything for $20. Just interesting what does think for example Mozilla about that?
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OSes and apps may have different business models or non-profit models. Apps can be license-fee-based or subscription-based or ad-revenue-based or etc. If ad-revenue-based, the app will usually have forced user-data collection, eg Chrome browser and Google Search.
....... So far, Mozilla does not charge OS vendors and users for installing Firefox and Firefox does not have forced user-data collection. This will likely not change.

Of course, if Google does acquire Canonical Inc/Ubuntu, Google may also change free Ubuntu to ad-revenue-based with forced Telemetry & Data collection like her free-of-charge Google-Android and Google-Chrome-OS, which is also not a bad deal for some computer users, ie compared to non-free Win 10's forced Telemetry and Data collection.
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Re: IBM to buy Red Hat

Post by BG405 »

michael louwe wrote: Tue Oct 30, 2018 1:49 pm ....... IOW Google-Ubuntu will not have forced Telemetry and Data collection, like what Canonical-Ubuntu is today
Highly unlikely, given their current business model (as I see it). It's where they make a lot of their money, I believe.
michael louwe wrote: Tue Oct 30, 2018 1:49 pm sale of Ubuntu licenses
Please, no! We don't want licencing systems put in place. Currently people are free to try out distros; making them akin to proprietary OS releases IMHO will just put people off trying & may also bring software piracy within the sights of Linux users.

Once they start charging fees for the distros, I'm pretty sure the makers of popular software will follow suit. Goodbye FOSS & hello COSS (commercial open-source software). :(
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Re: IBM to buy Red Hat

Post by BigEasy »

BG405 wrote: Tue Oct 30, 2018 6:47 pmOnce they start charging fees for the distros, I'm pretty sure the makers of popular software will follow suit.
Yes.
Goodbye FOSS & hello COSS (commercial open-source software). :(
So, what a single reason to use open source for money if I understand nothing in sources regardless opened or closed?
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Re: IBM to buy Red Hat

Post by xenopeek »

As long as software is using a free software license, if somebody is charging money for it somebody else can offer the same software without charging for it. That's what Scientific Linux, CentOS and others do with RHEL software.

As I noted, IBM's GitHub repository shows them using free software licenses. The same for Google's GitHub repository. We likely prefer copyleft licenses instead of the permissive free software licenses IBM and Google use (permitting use of non-free software licenses for derivatives) but notwithstanding that the projects grant us our essential 4 freedoms. Still, just look at Chromium—almost all its derivatives are non-free software and add something you don't get in the free software licensed Chromium.
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photonfanatic

The IBM purchase of Red hat

Post by photonfanatic »

I didn't see another thread related to this topic, so if there is one, please post me a link to it. If not, I just have a couple of questions that maybe someone here can answer. I may not have always used linux, but its safe to say that I've always been a fan. And thus, I find this news to be kind of depressing. You don't get a purchase without influence bleeding through. Doesn't happen. Might be fine for a little while, but eventually things always change. So my question would be:

Does it really matter? In the end, I mean. It would seem that the big corporations are trying to circle the wagons against the linux onslaught. And while any one of them isn't powerful enough to stop it, if they meet behind closed doors and they all team up (as they so often like to do) then they certainly can. It does appear they are doing this. Microsoft, IBM, Valve, Google, and others are getting in on this, buying up chunks like we see with this latest IBM purchase. But, since we're dealing with GNU and Linux, is there really any way they can ever stop the distros? I would think that the answer is no. Cause by license it must always remain free. And it will always be open source. So anybody anywhere could just pop out a new distro, (say if Canonical goes away) and it could be a great distro. It seems like if they don't control the license, then in the end they really don't control anything.

Thoughts? Opinions?
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Re: The IBM purchase of Red hat

Post by MtnDewManiac »

Hasn't Red Hat, like IBM, always been a for-profit company?

Yes, Red Hat has contributed a LOT to our little open source world - but so has IBM:
In 1999, IBM announced its support for the open source Linux operating system. Since that time IBM has invested considerable financial, technical, and marketing resources to foster the growth, development, and use of Linux technology, and has made significant contributions to the community on which Linux relies.
DISCLAIMER: I pulled the above quote from some random IBM website - so there might be a bit of "tooting one's own horn" there. Still, I wouldn't think such a statement to be completely false in any case.

For that matter, Microsoft still contributes to the linux kernel, as it has for years (although it does not appear to still be considered a "top" contributor like it once was). See:

Code: Select all

https://www.zdnet.com/article/whos-building-linux-in-2017/
I suspect that the reason IBM spent $34,000,000,000US to buy Red Hat is because the powers that be at IBM felt they'd save at least that much money in the future, versus merely being a paying customer of that company. But that is, of course, just a guess.

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Re: IBM to buy Red Hat

Post by Moem »

Mod note:
Threads merged.
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If your issue is solved, kindly indicate that by editing the first post in the topic, and adding [SOLVED] to the title. Thanks!
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Re: IBM to buy Red Hat

Post by MtnDewManiac »

xenopeek wrote: Wed Oct 31, 2018 4:39 amAs long as software is using a free software license, if somebody is charging money for it somebody else can offer the same software without charging for it. That's what Scientific Linux, CentOS and others do with RHEL software.
Furthermore... If Steve writes software and releases it under some kind of "free" license, and Bob & Tom each take that thing, modify it to suit them, and each release their versions of it... And then one day, Steve decides to stop releasing his software under the free license and, instead, starts charging $25/pop at version 53.5.PTO4... At that point - as far as I know - Bob and Tom are free to continue developing their own versions based on the last available free version of Steve's software. If they are able to do so, to actually maintain and develop their versions, great.

If they cannot, though... so be it. This does not make Steve an evil person. Neither does the fact that he is now charging for his (original-developer) version of the thing. Doing something, and then ceasing to do that thing does not evil make.

How is it that companies, even corporations, are treated differently in this regard? The purpose of most businesses - be they sole proprietorships, partnerships, or corporations - is to make a PROFIT. If you find a way to do so by charging for a product that you own the rights to, well... It seems to me that we - as a population, I mean; not necessarily you, or you, or even YOU as individuals - support (by giving them a portion of our money, again as a population) a whole lot of businesses that choose to make their profit in rather more nefarious ways.

I don't know that I've really said anything. Seems like I did have a point to make, but I cannot remember what it was.

Regards,
MDM
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michael louwe

Re: IBM to buy Red Hat

Post by michael louwe »

photonfanatic wrote: Thu Nov 01, 2018 10:43 pm But, since we're dealing with GNU and Linux, is there really any way they can ever stop the distros? I would think that the answer is no. Cause by license it must always remain free. And it will always be open source.
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Not quite true.

Licenses for Red Hat Ent Linux(RHEL) and Zorin OS Ultimate are not free = need some kind of payment to download, install and activate them. These Linux desktop OSes have been trademarked as a brand. But licenses for Zorin OS Core and Red Hat's Fedora and CentOS are free.

Canonical Inc has also trademarked Ubuntu OS as a brand but offered Ubuntu to users for free. Canonical Inc can legally start charging users for Ubuntu licenses at any time.
....... Canonical Inc has about US$126 million of revenue in 2017 mainly from charges/fees for extended support of Ubuntu OS (past its EOL) provided to companies. Red Hat Inc has about US$2 billion of revenue in 2017 mainly from support service subscription fees provided to enterprise-users of RHEL = eg no need to pay much more to M$ to run Win 10 Ent.

OTOH, any Linux developer can freely fork a Linux distro like RHEL, Fedora, CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, Archlinux, etc and do whatever he/she wants with his/her newly named Linux fork, eg provide the OS to users for free or charge them for OS licenses by trade-marking their forked OS.
....... Linux Mint is a fork of Ubuntu and Ubuntu is in turn a fork of Debian - all free of charge but not necessarily so. Be it desktop or mobile, Linux is a forking OS.
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P S - Similarly, Codeweavers Inc's CrossOver program for Linux that can run most Windows program on Linux is not free but her sponsored open-source Wine program for Linux is free to use. CrossOver is fully GUI-based and user-friendly to even noobs. Wine is the base-development program for CrossOver. Wine is a bit crippled and only mostly tech-geeks can fully use it.
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