Comment by cyphar

My main worry is that this will end up like the Novell acquisition of SUSE. 10 years on and there is still scar tissue running through SUSE and openSUSE. Lots of bad blood was stirred up (and in many ways this is what cause the drop in interest in SUSE). IBM has hardly had the best history when it comes to treating its acquisitions (or its employees for that matter).

On the other hand, I know quite a few folks who work for IBM and do great free software work. I want to think that RedHat would be treated like OzLabs -- a fairly isolated group that gets to continue working on all of the free software work they have always done.

Here's hoping it works out. The survival of RedHat (or any large free software company) is very important to the longevity of the projects that we all depend on.

[I work at SUSE, though I wasn't around during the Novell years I have heard plenty of horror stories. And I've used GroupWise.]