IBM buys Redhat, how will it affect open source and linux specifically?
 

I didn't see a thread here about this, so I thought I'd ask people more knowledgeable than I about it. Has IBM been open source friendly? Or have they tried to bully linux and other FOSS projects around? It seems to me this would be a good way of doing so since Redhat has been a very influential linux distro.

https://www.enterprisetech.com/2018/...loud-provider/
is where I read about it, "officially". 5m ago. ;)
I "heard" about it earlier this month.

We live in interesting times.

John out.

The FOSS fanatics and anarchist, anti-business frienge will be having hissy fits, but I can't see a problem. Look at the facts: IBM
1. is a member of the Linux foundation
2. is in the top 10 of contributors to the kernel
3. assists purchasers of its mainframes to install Linux as well as Z/OS
4. has introduced a mainframe range with Linux instead of z/OS
5. recommended Linux to former customers of OS/2 when it was discontinued.

Basically, one Linux friendly company has taken over another. No big deal.

DavidMcCann: Jus like the "good ol' days"?

This is entirely anecdotal but I was not an MS customer much after DOS. Instead I bought IBM's OS/2 v.2.0 followed by 2.1, 3.0 and 4.0 WSeB. In 1994 I designed, sold and built up a small business network consisting of roughly 200 workstations with 2.1. In 4 years there was not a single unscheduled shutdown. My clients were very happy and so was I. It might be worthy of note that 2.1 fit on less than 30 floppies. Service packs were absolutely HUGE, that is in percentage to the overall system (vastly greater than Win 95 to Win 98 upgrades and not as a "new" - read "pay me" - release) and they came as part of the initial service package. Shortly after 4.0 was released the community offered the "emx runtime" to compile Unix/Linux source. I had an early version of Enlightenment on one of my desktop systems. Shortly after 4.0 failed to put a dent in Win 98 or XP sales, IBM notified EOL as a 10 year process of winding down.

My experience as an IBM customer was excellent and I'd gladly, though likely cautiously, do it again. I haven't been a user of RedHat since 1999 when I switched to Slackware excepting a few days trying out CentOS. I'm not a fan of what RedHat was or currently is. It remains to be seen what IBM will do with it but I am very likely to find out for myself based on past experience.