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IBM TO ACQUIRE RED HAT

Discussion in 'CentOS, Redhat & Oracle Linux News' started by buik, Oct 29, 2018.

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  1. buik

    buik “The best traveler is one without a camera.”

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  2. eva2000

    eva2000 Administrator Staff Member

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    Wow $34 billion pay day ! That's a massive amount of $$$$
    The landscape is ever changing :)
     
  3. Jimmy

    Jimmy Well-Known Member

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    Should be interesting to see if IBM throws money into Fedora and makes it a real player.
     
  4. buik

    buik “The best traveler is one without a camera.”

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    That will not happen.

    In fact, I wonder what will happen to CentOS. The foundation for Centminmod.
    The problem is that CentOS has been part of Red Hat for a number of years.

    The brand name, intellectual property> logos everything is transferred to Red Hat at the time.
    In return they have got a job and their hobby has become a job.

    The question is whether CentOS is interesting for the new created Red Hat/IBM.
    because you are actually giving away the RHEL flagship with a different logo for free.

    This directly affects their core business as RHEL is.
    And because IBM has not made a decent profit for years and lost a lot of value.
    The purchase amount have to be earned back and money has to be earned in addition to that.

    Unfortunately, there are many examples where this game has already been played out.

    Let's hope it stays as it is for CentOS.
     
  5. eva2000

    eva2000 Administrator Staff Member

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    Indeed... though wonder how tied CentOS and Redhat users are ? How many corporations that pay for Redhat also use CentOS ?

    Probably it's money to be made in growing cloud/container space related service/products centered around Redhat and not CentOS ?
     
  6. Jimmy

    Jimmy Well-Known Member

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  7. eva2000

    eva2000 Administrator Staff Member

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    a few wishlist OS supports are in dev dashboard at centminmod/centminmod i.e. Fedora and Amazon Linux but just wishlist items for when I have the time and money to work on it.
     
  8. buik

    buik “The best traveler is one without a camera.”

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    I know a lot from first hand:)
    Red Hat for the mission critical systems where software support in case of 0/day bugs or complex emergency crash/downtime etc is essential.
    And CentOS for none mission critical.
    Problem is that CentOS is based on the same rpms as Red hat.
    So if you do have the knowledge in house.

    You could create the same environment whether it is a container server park.
    Or other solutions based on Red Hat software without paying software fees.
    If your park isn't mission critical or you simple don't want to pay.

    Its all about money. I know enough companies that will lose tons of license costs per year if all CentOS servers are migrated to Red Hat.

    For example 1 license = 1 server 24x7 support quickly cost around 4000 Euro for 3 years (scale costs omitted).

    Imagine that your company does have a small farm of only 1000 servers,
    then you know enough pricewise.

    To conclude with the fact that there is still a lot to be gained by IBM.
    That is why IBM has paid so much for Red Hat.

    It must be earned back. After all, it is not a social service.

    That is why I fear the worst.
    There is absolutely no reason for IBM to continue CentOS.
    IBM want to sell licenses for servers who will otherwise run CentOS for free.
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2018
  9. rdan

    rdan Well-Known Member

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    Maybe time to consider clearlinux also? :)
     
  10. eva2000

    eva2000 Administrator Staff Member

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  11. rdan

    rdan Well-Known Member

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    Same for.
     
  12. buik

    buik “The best traveler is one without a camera.”

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    We have to wait, it usually takes a month or 8 to 12 before there is approval for an acquisition.
    I say that it is exit. It only costs money (team maintenance) and they do not add value. It costs only money.
    CentOS fits perfectly with the philosophy of Red Hat. But not at all at IBM.
     
  13. nofun

    nofun New Member

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    Let's hope Big Blue will focus on cloud solutions, not on kernel :) I think we may hope so, because they need corporate accounts from RedHat to host them at Softlayer (IBM cloud now), that the purpose I suppose, so developers of RedHat may remain in peace for some time ))
     
  14. buik

    buik “The best traveler is one without a camera.”

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    CentOS has no developers but repackers, which are rebuilding source RPM packages.
    Spend money on staff to repackage your flagship and give it away for free.

    A bit of a business remediation will immediately cut it away.
    If it falls away, you still have the choice of Oracle Linux, which is also a derivative of RHEL.
     
  15. nofun

    nofun New Member

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    I slightly remember 9 years ago a repacker from centos disappeared for 5 months (so no updates were made to official repo) and then continued to work, so shouldn't be a real problem for IBM too. )) Thanks for mentioning Oracle Linux.
     
  16. buik

    buik “The best traveler is one without a camera.”

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    Np about Oracle.

    Back in the days CentOS was a volunteer initiative so everything was possible.
    But since a few years CentOS is property of Red Hat and in return the volunteers in employment of Red Hat.
    In short, volunteers make their hobby their profession.

    If IBM pulls the plug out, they will not only lose their job but also the CentOS name, trademark rights, etc.
    I wonder if the current employees would voluntarily continue if they just lost their jobs, where they did exactly the same.

    It seems to me that it is psychologically very heavy to voluntarily do the same job that you were previously paid for.
     
  17. nofun

    nofun New Member

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    Very reasonable. We'll see. I just like CentOs, don't want it to be a history unit )
     
  18. buik

    buik “The best traveler is one without a camera.”

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    Absolutely true.

    Years ago there were several Red Hat Enterprise Linux derivatives/clones like the most known: CERN, Starcom, Whitebox, Scientific Linux.

    These are all gone nowadays expect for Scientific Linux, what a RHEL clone had been but now CentOS plus extra packages.
     
  19. Matt

    Matt Well-Known Member

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    We do, we have RedHat subscriptions, but aim to use CentOS where possible.
     
  20. buik

    buik “The best traveler is one without a camera.”

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    Same here.
    Something tells me that IBM wants to transfer CentOS servers to Red Hat.
    But maybe I am biased.