You can read my blog post and comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20391504
I'm assuming that you're implying that's what IBM wants?
It makes us worse off, I feel. Nearly all these big mergers are about cornering markets, reducing competition and avoiding innovations. At best they're about finance shenanigans.
It's not as if redhat customers are likely to be excited about this.
After a certain point, it's pretty clear to me that consolidation only benefits a few significantly invested shareholders and no one else. I suspect this is somewhere greater than the "big 4-5" we've become accustomed to accepting in every sector, when economies of scale stop showing significant sizable benefits to consumers and the market at large. Instead, it turns into pure financial strategy to maximize the few most significant investors' ROI which becomes significantly disproportionate to their contribution to society.
Antitrust cases are quite slow to react to these circumstances, be it intentional (financial influence in government) and or structural (government intentionally moves slowly).
A second reason is that practices evolve around legal limitations. Monopolies can stay on one side of the legal letter, and that evolves over time.
To actually deal with trusts requires legislation specifically tailored to the monopolistic tendencies of (for example) the 2019 tech sector. Maybe "data share" needs to be a concept like market share is/was.
This acquisition has the potential of IBM using RH to disrupt the cancer of putting everything on AWS/GCE/Azure by pushing open source-based models.
If there is one thing that’s obvious, it’s that people in this thread have very little imagination of the benefits of teamwork and conjoined efforts. The only thing this is evidence of is the shocking ignorance about businesses.
---
I like the Walrus best," said Alice, "because you see he was a little sorry for the poor oysters."
"He ate more than the Carpenter, though," said Tweedledee. "You see he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn't count how many he took: contrariwise."
"That was mean!" Alice said indignantly. "Then I like the Carpenter best—if he didn't eat so many as the Walrus."
"But he ate as many as he could get," said Tweedledum.
This was a puzzler. After a pause, Alice began, "Well! They were both very unpleasant characters—
That's the problem with your thinking and people like you in this thread: you're entirely banking on faith that IBM won't ruin RH, even when you cite a great example here about Oracle making similar acquisitions and running them into the ground. Seriously, what makes you think IBM is going to be any different?
I'm just trying to be optimistic in this case, although I agree with how acquisitions always run into the ground regardless of the company, but something tells me IBM would think twice about doing something remotely like that to RH. For one thing, they contribute excellent work into the kernel and some of their senior engineers have had pivotal roles in adding components to the kernel which may have been a significant factor in improving it, and a minor testament that they care about the system as a whole. That doesn't guarantee anything but it is quite evident from their perspective that they are just looking to both increase their foothold in the industry and improve the base system.
Who will be developing the lion share of what makes "the Linux desktop?"
If IBM wants to ever make money of this deal, the only way available for them is to kick everybody, but support people, and crank up fees to the max from big corporate clients.
Ubuntu has certainly stole the crown of "the server linux" as being built on a more sound foundation, and being more conservative in bringing disruptive novelties — something that just any sysadmin likes.
And that timeframe might be shorter than you'd think. My guess would be "days".
Any evidence to back up your guess, or is it just the hunch of some dude on the internet?