Better than MS buying them From: Bill Reid <billreid@shaw.ca> To: roundtable@muug.ca Sent: Monday, October 29, 2018 6:30 PM Subject: Re: [RndTbl] IBM to buy RedHat Here is Cringely's take on it: https://www.cringely.com/2018/10/29/red-hat-takes-over-ibm/ On 2018-10-29 5:46 p.m., Hartmut W Sager wrote:

IBM to buy RedHat for $34 billion.  Comments?  (I anticipate an avalanche of comments.)

Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331

_______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable

_______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable

Cringely seems fairly accurate. My first reaction was: good for IBM. Not so sure about RH. One commentary I saw said something about buying a company that gives its main product away for free. That hasn't been true for a VERY long time, so mainstreamers will continue to be confused, apparently. The biggest distraction this could create is if IBM decides that this is a great time to try again to push desktops or laptops with preinstalled Linux. On 18-10-29 09:10 PM, Kevin McGregor wrote:

Red Hat stock is up 47%.

...

On Oct 29, 2018, at 18:30, Bill Reid <billreid@shaw.ca> wrote:

Here is Cringely's take on it: https://www.cringely.com/2018/10/29/red-hat-takes-over-ibm/

...

On 2018-10-29 5:46 p.m., Hartmut W Sager wrote: IBM to buy RedHat for $34 billion. Comments? (I anticipate an avalanche of comments.) Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331 _______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable

---

Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable

---

Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable

Yeah, I don't think the risk is IBM pursuing distractions like getting back into desktop/laptop hardware. IBM gets FOSS, enterprise and cloud systems enough to know where Red Hat's core strengths are, and what they bring to the company. The real risk is that $34 billion is a huge investment for a company the size of IBM, so the pressure will be enormous to look for "efficiencies" to help pay some of that down. The corporate culture at IBM is different enough from Red Hat's that if they don't appreciate the more subtle things that made Red Hat successful, like its support and technical expertise, they could screw that up. I think Cringely is probably spot-on when he says Oracle won't like this, and I don't know how it'll respond or what it's options are. It'll be interesting to see how Microsoft responds. They've already made moves in a similar direction (e.g. Github acquisition), but I expect there might be more, including a closer partnership with, or buyout of, Canonical. On 10/30/2018 08:44 AM, Kevin McGregor wrote:

Well, IBM doesn't make desktops or laptops any more (sold the business to Lenovo), so I don't think that's an option.

On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 7:43 AM Scott Toderash <scott@100percenthelpdesk.com <mailto:scott@100percenthelpdesk.com>> wrote:

Cringely seems fairly accurate.

My first reaction was: good for IBM. Not so sure about RH.

One commentary I saw said something about buying a company that gives its main product away for free. That hasn't been true for a VERY long time, so mainstreamers will continue to be confused, apparently.

The biggest distraction this could create is if IBM decides that this is a great time to try again to push desktops or laptops with preinstalled Linux.

On 18-10-29 09:10 PM, Kevin McGregor wrote: > Red Hat stock is up 47%. > >> On Oct 29, 2018, at 18:30, Bill Reid <billreid@shaw.ca <mailto:billreid@shaw.ca>> wrote: >> >> Here is Cringely's take on it: >> https://www.cringely.com/2018/10/29/red-hat-takes-over-ibm/ >> >>> On 2018-10-29 5:46 p.m., Hartmut W Sager wrote: >>> IBM to buy RedHat for $34 billion.  Comments?  (I anticipate an avalanche of comments.) >>> Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331

-- Gilles R. Detillieux E-mail: <grdetil@scrc.umanitoba.ca> Spinal Cord Research Centre WWW: http://www.scrc.umanitoba.ca/ Dept. of Physiology and Pathophysiology, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, Univ. of Manitoba Winnipeg, MB R3E 0J9 (Canada)