There isn't a distribution which gives current Red Hat users a Red Hat-like experience without systemd.

So, no, there aren't enough distributions; the world is short by at least one ;-)

Bryan Lunduke - Red Hat, IBM, & the Corporate Consolidation of Linux

The questions are whether there are enough people who want such a product and whether enough of them are developers capable of maintaining it. "CentOS without systemd" would be more of a complete fork than a derivative. The majority of users of CentOS are internet companies, computer companies, and universities: hardly the potential customers for a niche product. And yes, all systemd-less distros are niche products for (to use the politeest term) enthusiats.

Well, I can think of one big negative - if Microsoft feels this is a business threat such that they go back to their cold-war with Linux.

34 billion for Redhat is ALOT. Redhat has a revenue of about 2 billion and a profit of about 300 million per year. A modest valuation would put the value of Redhat at about 3 billion. A less moderate valuation of perhaps 5 billion.

So 34 billion is absolutely an offer they cannot decline. That's about 100x P/E.

Is this a good thing or bad thing? Well, IBM is not the worst IMO. Microsoft, Apple, Google etc, those are the worst.

How did you estimate those figures?
It seems that Red Hat stock was at $116.68 when IBM initiated the purchase process. So the total valuation at NYSE was ~$20.51 billion.
IBM buys the stock at $190 (+63%) for a total amount of ~$34 billion.
But of course, stock can vary daily and "valuations" are very relative depending on what aspects you consider...

A P/E of 10 on a Mc/rev 1:1.

20 billion was a high valuation, and IBM's offer was good even compared with that.

My point is, the bid was a good bid, too good to reject.

Definitely

Not only do I think it's far too late for Microsoft to do that, even if they did, so what? MS cannot possibly dominate in the areas that Linux now dominates ie: Phones, Enterprise servers, embedded and super computers. Linux isn't likely to dominate on the Desktop any time soon although it continues to slowly grow. This is all exactly why MS wisely changed their tune recently and it's not going to change greatly, quickly.

As for IBM taking over Redhat, I suspect that the good will outweigh the bad and I wish them good fortune with it. I find it ironic that Steve Jobs saw IBM as Big Brother (though I can see why just from appearances) but Microsoft behaved far more like Big Brother than IBM ever dreamed but that Business Plan has largely seen it's day. It's a new Jungle out there folks and the Old Guard is struggling to adapt.

Honestly, IBM looks like a less evil to me than (theoretically) Apple or Google. It's just marketing, that's it. But will we know the reason? Not in this life, I'm sure.

IBM have done an excellent job over the years of continually changing its business model. It got out of building printers, PCs and laptops before they became "commodity" items, it's still in the large "mainframe" market because there's some things that (shock, horror!) just won't work on a stack of "pizza-boxes". It has robust mechanisms for companies to just outsource all their IT to IBM. So even though they would be considered "Old Guard" their business models and evolution are certainly not static.

IBM is also a large patent troll, pretty much on a par with Microsoft.

In order to change it's business model it has laid off thousands of people over the last few years and this is still going on: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...s-the-business

As with SUSE before it, Red Hat's fortunes are firmly in the hands of a giant multinational corporation. As with SUSE, it could spend the best part of the next 15 years or so being passed around, bought and sold...

Relevant:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-ro...or-ibm-growth/

Let us not forget the lessons of history and blindly trusting a company that was actively assisting the Nazi regime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

Really? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._the_Holocaust. This is not history forum.