IBM Purchase of Red Hat Software: There is No Fear Except Fear Itself – with Thanks to FDR

Paw Prints: Writings of the maddog
IBM bought Red Hat Software.
The world wide web is alive with the news, and many of the people who have worked and used Red Hat in the last 25 years are lamenting the “fall” of their beloved company and software.
I understand how they feel.
- The first company I worked for, Aetna Life and Casualty is much smaller than it used to be through various economic reasons.
- The college I taught at, Hartford State Technical College, was merged with the state community colleges and is not even mentioned today.
- Bell Laboratories, renamed Lucent and broken off from the world's largest telephone company, purchased by Alcatel, then by Nokia.
- Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), once the second largest computer company in the world was purchased by Compaq, then by HP.
- SGI (who I worked for briefly) is gone.
Believe me, I know the pain.
Yet IBM has been a friend of Linux for a long time.
As early as 1998 IBM said they were going to support Linux, one of the first major companies that said that while Microsoft was at its peak and calling Linux “a virus and a cancer”.
I still remember the IBM ads of the early 2000s touting Linux on TV and in magazines. I remember the little white-haired boy who represented Linux and how “on spot” the IBM advertisements were.
In 2001 we all cheered when IBM announced they had invested a billion USD in Linux (and made two billion from that investment).
I was invited to Austin, Texas by Daniel Frye, the VP of Open Source for IBM when Lou Gerstner Jr. (IBM's CEO) wrote the memo that made Open Source a focal point of IBM.
Lou wrote that in the past IBM had produced closed source products unless someone make a case for the product being Open Source. In the future IBM would produce Open Source products unless someone made a case for the product to be closed source.
Being from DEC, and knowing how engineers often were put through the legal and business gauntlet when they wanted to make a product Open Source, I understood the power of that memo from Lou.
I remember that day in Austin, when Dan asked me if the Open Source community would be afraid of IBM taking an active interest in Linux. I told him that some would, but the people I respected (Linus, Alan Cox, David Miller and others) would welcome IBM's involvement in Linux, GNU, and Open Source.
I remember when people left the Linux project because “other people were making money on the work I do”. This was and is a wrong attitude. You write Free Software for whatever reason you write it. The fact that other people make money off of it is not a concern as long as they obey the license you wrote it under.
IBM has Open Source advocates all over the world. Their purchase of Red Hat should increase the exposure of Red Hat to even more people, to allow Red Hat to be used in even larger commercial-grade opportunities.
The statements I have read from both companies state that Red Hat will still be an autonomous division of IBM. We will see how true that is, but it is a good sign that Jim Whitehurst is to remain at the helm of Red Hat and will join IBM's executive team.
Early on IBM hired many FOSS developers, even for projects not directly in their line of business. They gave support to Apache and many other Open Source projects. They were sponsors of many Open Source conferences.
IBM even has a server line called “LinuxONE” which touts security, scalability and lightening speed.
I can not predict the future, but if the past is any example of IBM's respect and love for Linux, than Red Hat should be confident in their future.
Carpe Diem.
comments powered by DisqusIssue 259/2022
Buy this issue as a PDF
News
-
System76 Teams up with HP to Create the Dev One Laptop
HP and System76 have come together to develop a new laptop, powered by Pop!_OS and aimed toward developers.
-
Titan Linux is a New KDE Linux Based on Debian Stable
Titan Linux is a new Debian-based Linux distribution that features the KDE Plasma desktop with a focus on usability and performance.
-
Danielle Foré Has an Update for elementary OS 7
Now that Ubuntu 22.04 has been released, the team behind elementary OS is preparing for the upcoming 7.0 release.
-
Linux New Media Launches Open Source JobHub
New job website focuses on connecting technical and non-technical professionals with organizations in open source.
-
Ubuntu Cinnamon 22.04 Now Available
Ubuntu Cinnamon 22.04 has been released with all the additions from upstream as well as other features and improvements.
-
Pop!_OS 22.04 Has Officially Been Released
From the makers of some of the finest Linux-powered desktop and laptop computers on the market comes the latest version of their Ubuntu-based distribution, Pop!_OS 22.04.
-
Star Labs Unveils a New Small Format Linux PC
The Byte Mk I is an AMD-powered mini Linux PC with Coreboot support and plenty of power.
-
MX Linux Verison 21.1 “Wildflower” Now Available
The latest release of the systemd-less MX Linux is now ready for public consumption.
-
Microsoft Expands Their Windows Subsystem for Linux Offerings With AlmaLinux
Anyone who works with Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) will now find a new addition to the available distributions, one that’s become the front-runner replacement for CentOS.
-
Debian 11.3 Released wIth Numerous Bug and Security Fixes
The latest point release for Debian Bullseye is now available with some very important updates.