IBM and Red Hat Linux

The news that IBM had an agreement to purchase Red Hat (the distributor and supporter of a Linux distro for commercial use) was followed quickly by a series of comments from the tech world, ranging from anger to disappointment.

I'm not sure that the purchase of Red Hat by IBM is a bad thing.

One can view this event in the form of two questions. The first is "Should Red Hat sell itself (to anyone)?". The second is "Given that Red Hat is for sale, who would be a good purchaser?".

The negative reaction, I think, is mostly about the first question. People are disappointed (or angered) by the sale of Red Had -- to anyone.

But once you commit to a sale, the question changes and the focus is on the buyer. Who are possible buyers for Red Hat?

IBM is, of course, a possibility. Many people might object to IBM, and if we think of the IBM from its monopoly days and its arrogance and incompatible hardware designs, then IBM would be a poor choice. (Red Hat would also be a poor acquisition for that IBM, too.)

But IBM has changed quite a bit. It still sells mainframes; its S/36 line has mutated into servers, and it has sold (long ago) its PC business. It must compete in the cloud arena with Amazon.com, Microsoft, and Google (and Dell, and Oracle, and others). Red Hat helps IBM in this area. I think IBM is not so foolish as to break Red Hat or make many changes.

One possibility is that IBM purchased Red Hat to prevent others from doing so. (You buy something because you need it or because you want to keep it from others.) Who are the others?

Amazon.com and Microsoft come quickly to mind. They both offer cloud services, and Red Hat would help both with their offerings. The complainers may consider this; would they prefer Red Hat to go to Amazon or Microsoft? (Of the two, I think Microsoft would be the better owner. It is expanding its role with Linux and moving its business away from Windows and Windows-only software to a larger market of cloud services that support both Windows and Linux.)

There are other possible purchasers. Oracle has been mentioned by critics (usually as a "could be worse, could be Oracle" comment). Red Hat fills a gap in Oracle's product line between hardware and its database software, and also provides a platform for Java (another Oracle property).

Beyond those, there are Facebook, Dell, and possibly Intel, although I consider the last to be a long shot. None of them strike me as a good partner.

Red Hat could be purchased by an equity/investment company, which would probably doom Red Hat to partitioning and sales of individual components.

In the end, IBM seems quite a reasonable purchaser. IBM has changed from its old ways and it supports Linux quite a bit. I think it will recognize value and strive to keep it. Let's see what happens.