IBM to acquire software company Red Hat for $34 billion

Reuters ^

[Java4Jay]

IBM Corp said on Sunday it had agreed to acquire U.S. software company Red Hat Inc for $34 billion, including debt, as it seeks to diversify its technology hardware and consulting business into higher-margin products and services.

[SuperLuminal]

"IBM may not have been well run for the last quarter century or so, but they built enough goodwill in their first 40 years to last almost indefinitely IF they made a good product."

Reminds me of Sears & Roebuck, which may be on its way out of existence...

IBM Sears may not have been well run for the last quarter century or so, but they built enough goodwill in their first 40 years to last almost indefinitely IF they made sold a good product.

[FroggyTheGremlim]

I still use OS/2. It has been adopted by Europeans and went under the name eComStation, now Arca Noae.

I despise what IBM poltroons (executives) did to a fine OS and the wonderful folks who used it.

IBM will destroy Red Hat in the same way, through their incompetence and cowardice.

[Secret Agent Man]

Heres hoping they dont buy it and then fuch it up the ibm way.

[hotdogjones]

Fedora is still around it is the desktop version of redhat.

[trebb]

Red Hat went professional with that “Free Software” and has been putting out a superior product, with full tech support, for a long time....they charge for the worthwhile product which means most free-anything seekers only know that they deal in Linux and charge money...I considered them as an alternative to Gates and company but didn’t want to pay either....

[ShadowAce]

[grey_whiskers]

One thing I miss about Lotus Notes from 25 years ago - the ability to pull back an errant email. Don’t know if that’s still possible.

Would have saved 1 boss back then from an accidental “reply-all”. Oops for him.

http://dilbert.com/strip/1995-05-24

[rarestia]

the ability to pull back an errant email

I've been involved in MS Exchange administration in one form or another for 15 years. Message recall has been around at least that long.

[GingisK]

I sure did like the old IBM better. Back in the late 1960s an IBM CE taught be about the innards of the IBM 1130 and the 360. It changed my life forever.

[zeugma]

I can retrieve messages in Exchange via Outlook.

I've never seen that actually work. I see a lot of "so and so would like to recall message xxxx", but I still see the original message. I suppose it makes the senders feel good though.

[bert]

but then there was the PC and Moore’s law

[BlueMondaySkipper]

I'm the lead Platform Architect for a big global bank. Tomorrow morning when I arrive at the office the first thing I'm going to do is de-certify Red Hat Enterprise Linux as our preferred Linux platform and announce Ubuntu as our long-term strategic direction. That's how much I cannot stand IBM.

How very leftist of you. You love it today, but are flying off the handle, triggered by the IBM purchase and demanding it be removed from your presence. Seems like an emotional rather than rational decision. SMH

[Vinnie]

I remember when Red Hat went public. Tried to buy some stock.
The average schmo was locked out.
IIRC started at around $25/share and in a few days doubled, leveled off, think it dropped some.
I lost interest after that. Bummer

[GingisK]

The PC was based upon the crappiest uP of that era. Imagine what computers would be like now if IBM had chosen the highly superior 68000, and then Moore’s Law takes hold.

[SaveFerris]

LOL. Once left one voicemail for my boss at 4 a.m. something. I had been out earlier that night and felt I had come up with the solution to something nagging me. So I hit the office about 2 a.m. or 2:30 a.m. and worked on it past 4 a.m. Got it working and left him a voicemail that I’d be in late that a.m. by a couple of hours. We had 24-hour security so I just checked in at the desk and my badge got me access to our floor.

He was surprised by the time-stamp. I tend to be an all-nighter. Don’t like early but I love to work late at night, often. Too many nights on 3rd shift and late nights in college.

[SaveFerris]

My first official I/T job was on an IBM 3083 (2 of them). We had a 370-158 for development. Tech school before that was leasing time on a 360 emulator.

[SaveFerris]

Yes, I’m talking 1994 (on Lotus Notes). We did not have that capability with whatever we had in 1995-1996 when my boss made that goof. Been too long; I don’t remember what we were using there.

[1L]

Sears is different from IBM. I know both companies well as I worked for both for a while. Sears is purely consumer driven where IBM is mostly business driven. Yeah, there was PC-DOS and OS/2 and the PC that quickly got cloned out of existence, but IBM was always known for their business offerings. Sears sold things under their own brand for so long that consumers stopped going to them when the Circuit Citys, Best Buys, etc. came around. Their entry into brand name products was way late and their store management ranged from bad to dreadful. They ran off good employees and didn’t offer newer, part time ones, much to make their brand better.

Sears goodwill was built during the time where my parents (born early ‘30s) were first married and lasted for 20 or so years. That was a LONG time ago. IBM had easily a half century or more of quality products and services. Sears has been going out of business slowly for decades while IBM, though maybe not the same IBM as we saw a few decades ago, is still going fairly strong.

[grey_whiskers]

I once worked a 36 hour day.

[SaveFerris]

Yep. Did 32-33 hours straight at my client. Thanks to a goof by my boss and one of the client’s guys (nice guy).

That was back when I was Big 6.......

If you know anything about Big 6, they weren’t thankful for that sort of effort. But I digress.