Probably not what Linus had in mind at the start.

While I am still  thinking about this,  Can't believe the Red Hat news.

IBM has supported open source for a long time. IBM R&D and resources will boost Linux server side which may have small flow on into the desktop. Linux desktop support by corporate players has declined markedly over the last year or two, one just has to look at the Canonical site, Ubuntu desktop is almost invisible and is clearly now an afterthought.

gehenna:

 

Probably not what Linus had in mind at the start.

 

I don't think Linus Torvolds will have an issue with it, he has never been against Linux as a revenue earner. Richard Stallman and co will probably shed a few tears though.

gzt: Red Hat will join ibm hybrid cloud divisions as an independent unit.

It will eventually be dipped in blue, swirled around and come out purple.

Things will continue as normal for a while, but as IBM management is inserted Red Hat's culture will be subsumed and slowly they will turn into another ineffective IBM division churning out cookie-cutter "solutions", and scale back contributions to anything that isn't IBMs core business. That's bad news for Linux, as Red Hat contribute across the entire Linux ecosystem, rather than just the kernel and cloud stuff.