Comment by emmelaich
7 years ago
Fedora and CentOS will both survive -- but maybe under a different name.
This is possible because everything in Redhat/Fedora/Centos is open source.
I'd be willing to bet numerous people are working on a non IBM/Redhat version of Centos.
That's the thing with an acquisition like this: what did IBM buy exactly? The code is open source, the people can leave and form a new company. The thing IBM really owns are Red Hat's contracts. But when those expire, the other party could sign their new contract with a company of former Red Hatters, if they want.
Buying an open source company only makes sense if you give the employees of that company exactly what they want. They are the real value.
It takes a lot more than a few to provide support. It would take years to get near the support that Red Hat provide now.
Theoretically, it seems all Red Hatters could quit simultaneously and form a new company according to the same structure they had before.
Of course in practice that requires a lot of coordination, there's a ton of legal hoops to jump through and you end up with a big company built around customers it doesn't currently have.