I'm a Red Hatter, and I'm not sure what they mean either. I obviously only know my own little corner of engineering, but I've seen no signs whatsoever of being gutted. From where I stand, it's just a change of ownership that, at least for now, is completely transparent on the ground. I expect the situation to continue for as long as Red Hat keeps making money.

They haven't. I have no doubt that IBM has historically mishandled a great many acquisitions but thus far I haven't seen any changes that feel pushed by IBM.

Source: I work at Red Hat.

It's a bit of a strange comment considering it blames IBM for Lenovo's management of the Thinkpad line and a commercial that they later realized (but still haven't corrected themselves) was actually an HPE commercial [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30047062

Traveling consultant-architect for Red Hat here.

Before IBM purchase: Travel to clients, build and/or fix their things, suggest improvements.

After IBM purchase: Travel to clients, build and/or fix their things, suggest improvements.

At least from my side of Red Hat I've experienced zero changes in how I go about my work. In fact, my schedule is even more packed now, we can barely keep up with the demand. As far as I can tell IBM has left us alone to do our thing. Maybe it's different for other departments.

Longtime Red Hatter here (in a non-engineering role). No "gutting" has taken place whatsoever. Thus far IBM has had an almost entirely hands-off, do-things-your-way, noninterference-in-internal-affairs sort of approach to Red Hat. That's not to say Red Hat hasn't had challenges but those likely would have developed even if it had remained independent.

Was going to say, Red Hat seems to be doing fine/great. Very innovative Linux company.