Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
In Fedora, our mission, governance, and objectives remain the same. Red Hat associates will continue to contribute to the upstream in the same ways they have been."
| From: | Matthew Miller <mattdm-AT-fedoraproject.org> | |
| To: | announce-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org | |
| Subject: | Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora | |
| Date: | Tue, 9 Jul 2019 08:57:26 -0400 | |
| Message-ID: | <20190709125726.GA24849@mattdm.org> | |
| Cc: | Discussions with the Fedora Council and community <council-discuss-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org> | |
| Archive-link: | Article |
Today marks a new day in the 26-year history of Red Hat. IBM has finalized its acquisition of Red Hat, which will operate as a distinct unit within IBM. What does this mean for Red Hat’s participation in the Fedora Project? In short, nothing. Red Hat will continue to be a champion for open source, just as it always has, and valued projects like Fedora that will continue to play a role in driving innovation in open source technology. IBM is committed to Red Hat’s independence and role in open source software communities. We will continue this work and, as always, we will continue to help upstream projects be successful and contribute to welcoming new members and maintaining the project. In Fedora, our mission, governance, and objectives remain the same. Red Hat associates will continue to contribute to the upstream in the same ways they have been. We will do this together, with the community, as we always have. If you have questions or would like to learn more about today’s news, I encourage you to review the materials below. For any questions not answered here, please feel free to contact us. Red Hat CTO Chris Wright will host an online Q&A session in the coming days where you can ask questions you may have about what the acquisition means for Red Hat and our involvement in open source communities. Details will be announced on the Red Hat blog. * Press release: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/ibm-closes... * Blog from Chris Wright: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-and-ibm-accelerati... * FAQ: https://community.redhat.com/blog/2019/07/faq-for-communi... Regards, Matthew Miller, Fedora Project Leader Brian Exelbierd, Fedora Community Action and Impact Coordinator -- Matthew Miller <mattdm@fedoraproject.org> Fedora Project Leader _______________________________________________ announce mailing list -- announce@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to announce-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-cond... List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/announce@li...
Posted Jul 9, 2019 13:42 UTC (Tue)
by stumbles (guest, #8796)
[Link] (7 responses)
Posted Jul 9, 2019 14:45 UTC (Tue)
by am (subscriber, #69042)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Jul 9, 2019 15:11 UTC (Tue)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (2 responses)
To be fair, a license trying to prohibit evil without a very clear boundary is a terrible idea. It is reasonable legal advice to want that permission so you are not caught in that issue
Posted Jul 9, 2019 18:32 UTC (Tue)
by josh (subscriber, #17465)
[Link]
Posted Jul 9, 2019 20:39 UTC (Tue)
by scientes (guest, #83068)
[Link]
Posted Jul 9, 2019 15:14 UTC (Tue)
by orev (guest, #50902)
[Link]
Posted Jul 9, 2019 15:43 UTC (Tue)
by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
[Link] (1 responses)
The JSLint license is self-contradictory. On the one hand, it says "Permission is hereby granted [...] to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use..."
And then it adds a restriction: "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." below the line that refers to "The above copyright notice". I don't see how the good/evil line can be seen as anything other than an irrelevant comment (but I can understand how people might be leery of it out of an abundance of caution.)
Posted Jul 10, 2019 3:02 UTC (Wed)
by nivedita76 (guest, #121790)
[Link]
Posted Jul 9, 2019 14:57 UTC (Tue)
by ncultra (✭ supporter ✭, #121511)
[Link] (11 responses)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisi...
How many LWN readers remember Lotus? Tivoli? The history doesn't look good.
Posted Jul 9, 2019 17:05 UTC (Tue)
by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935)
[Link] (9 responses)
Posted Jul 9, 2019 17:36 UTC (Tue)
by hansendc (subscriber, #7363)
[Link] (7 responses)
But, seriously, a $34b price tag gives Red Hat more inertia than the others, but it's on the same trajectory as the others now. I just don't see the model changing fundamentally from all the others.
Posted Jul 9, 2019 17:53 UTC (Tue)
by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Jul 9, 2019 18:36 UTC (Tue)
by SEJeff (guest, #51588)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jul 9, 2019 18:48 UTC (Tue)
by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jul 9, 2019 19:11 UTC (Tue)
by SEJeff (guest, #51588)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jul 10, 2019 17:26 UTC (Wed)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link]
All the major vendors are part of OIN anyway. So they aren't likely to assert patents. Especially now that Red Hat is part of IBM
Posted Jul 9, 2019 20:40 UTC (Tue)
by scientes (guest, #83068)
[Link]
Posted Jul 9, 2019 18:37 UTC (Tue)
by ncultra (✭ supporter ✭, #121511)
[Link]
Posted Jul 11, 2019 3:20 UTC (Thu)
by gdt (subscriber, #6284)
[Link]
If you want to acquire a firm with a goal to make and sell products then thinking about "I.P" as patents doesn't cut it. What you really want is the team of which that patent was a by-product of. Without the team, the patent is of no more value to you than it would be to a legal firm of a few people -- so what value is the rest of the organisation adding? Without the team you might be able to assemble a second team, and be still climbing the learning curve whilst your competitors overtake you. Successful teams are also a cultural artifact: just assembling a room of talented people isn't enough to create an effective team. So there's a lot to be said for owning an already well-working team.
The intellectual assets IBM are purchasing is people and culture. Both of those are intangible assets and can easily have their value destroyed. That shouldn't be a shock: this is the software business, which -- as Tom DeMarco has pointed out since the 1980s -- is a people management business. (BTW, even tangible assets aren't that permanent without careful management; Flint had its entire water piping assets destroyed in a few weeks.)
IBM are getting a lot of people, culture, and effective teams for their money. So "hardly any IP" isn't a useful summary of the intellectual assets being purchased.
The challenge for IBM is to enhance Red Hat where IBM is strong (eg, better marketing) and to avoid degrading Red Hat where IBM is weak (eg, running engineering organisations).
Posted Jul 9, 2019 18:35 UTC (Tue)
by SEJeff (guest, #51588)
[Link]
Posted Jul 10, 2019 8:05 UTC (Wed)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jul 11, 2019 0:23 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (2 responses)
XFree86 went into hard maintenance because the main (pretty much only) developer got kicked out and started Xorg.
The team behind Xorg then started Wayland, which is X13 in all but name (X12 was started but never got off the ground).
Xorg has been in "shutting down" mode almost since the day it started, and now that X13 is actually working reasonably well (or I presume so, my desktop hasn't been updated in yonks for practical reasons) the developers see no point in continuing with X11, other than to keep it safe while people are still using it.
Cheers,
Posted Jul 11, 2019 12:01 UTC (Thu)
by kskatrh (guest, #73410)
[Link] (1 responses)
You haven't been following it very well either.
Xorg existing long before Keith was booted from XFree86. Keith had nothing to do with starting Xorg.
Posted Jul 11, 2019 18:06 UTC (Thu)
by jzb (editor, #7867)
[Link]
Posted Jul 10, 2019 11:34 UTC (Wed)
by zoobab (guest, #9945)
[Link]
Let's ask them to donate again :-)
After all, IBM is shadow writing the forthcoming Tillis-Coons bill on restoring software patents in the US.
Would that be inline with Google's past company byline of do no evil?
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSLint#License
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Lawyers think I.P is patents, trademarks and copyrights; engineering managers have a different view
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Wol
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
> XFree86 went into hard maintenance because the main (pretty much only) developer got kicked out and started Xorg.
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora
Miller: Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora