Comment by knightofmars

While I agree with you that decisions of this nature are made top-down, the value in RedHat is its employees (as RedHat sells support for Open Source software). If a mass exodus occurs because of this acquisition, RedHat will no longer be providing value to the shareholders and will become a long running debt with no future in the black on IBM's books. It is quite possible that IBM will fail at properly handling RedHat after the acquisition due to entrenched business culture that is incapable of grasping the cultural change required to support a business model such as the one that RedHat employs. Business often appears as a bedfellow with economics with regards to ignoring the "human factor".