[Beowulf] Oh.. IBM eats Red Hat

[Prentice Bisbal]

On 10/29/2018 03:42 AM, Tony Brian Albers wrote:
> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-red-hat-m-a-ibm/ibm-to-acquire-softw
> are-company-red-hat-for-34-billion-idUSKCN1N20N3
>
> I wonder where that places us in the not too distant future..
>
> I've worked for Big Blue, and I'm not sure the company cultures are
> compatible to say the least.
>
> /tony
>

I dunno... IBM was a very early adopter and support of Linux. They used 
to run a lot of commercials touting Linux shortly after they adopted 
their pro-Linux stance. For example, here's a commercial from that 
campaign in 2003:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOtKZA9ri7M

So, IBM certainly 'gets' and supports Linux.

  As far as corporate cultures go, have you worked at RH? I haven't 
either, but I suspect their corporate culture is not that far from IBM 
as you'd think.  It's been 20 years or more since RHEL was based in 
someone's basement, and their move from Red Hat Linux to Red Hat 
Enterprise Linux around 15 years ago seems like something IBM would do. 
Having said that, I agree a clash of corporate cultures could be a 
disaster.

What worries me is that IBM's mission for a while now has been to get 
away from "commodity" products and specialize in specialized high-margin 
products. This is why they jettisoned all their x86-based products. What 
will that mean for RH? Isn't Linux essentially a low-margin commodity 
product now?

Prentice