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Comment by Jedd

7 years ago

Will this warrant an Our Incredible Journey [1] entry?

Not technically an exit, I guess, at least not for most of the staff that start to work for Big Blue in a month.

[1] https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

I figured bringing up that Tumblr will get flagged or at least downvoted, but it is amusing to ponder what would be the biggest, most high-profile acquisition in tech to merit an entry. Doubly funny when the firms involved aren't Silicon Valley startups but old enterprises.

  • I guess any publicly traded company is by definition at risk of being bought (or merged in this case) without notice or even much public speculation -- but this one feels particularly surprising as I'd been assuming much of Red Hat's value for its customers was its corporate-friendly support arrangements combined with its apparent independence from the traditionally-perceived excessively-corporate heavyweights.

    The arguably customer-hostile licensing changes at Red Hat over the last few years are possibly an indicator of a shift in company culture.

    On the other side, I've actually felt positively towards IBM since the 1990's when they started to commit heavily to a lot of free software efforts.