Krishna was on Norges podcast a while ago and mentioned that Red Hat would be (not his words) brought to heel with the rest of IBM. IMO, it is a version of the Broadcom/VMware playbook, boil-the-frog style.
Redhat underpins many low-visibility, very important Linux projects, and most have no idea they are doing it. For example, look at kernel committers:
weighted by market cap, the disparity is even more severe imo.
There is more visible projects (eg Ansible) that are great, but with very lackluster monetization and little impetus for IBM to GAF.
These guys are pursuing the wrong strategy, they should be using super popular, high-mindshare projects to drive new wave of tailored business solutions leveraging existing consulting teams they already have (IBM revenue to hugely reliant on PS, 33%). Basically the largest "forward deployed eng" transition ever, backed by existing very strong open-source software and tailored (with Watson, dear god) as the "AI powered" engine to appease the shareholder gods. You would run over so many startups with poor penetration at the F2000 level.
IBM won't entertain your recommended strategy. IBM wants deep-pocketed institutional money: the sort of broad-based popularity you hope for has no value at IBM. Governments, banks and monster health care operations are the only customers IBM really cares about for their computing products.
I know IBM has been employing a large number of people to work on Linux. I'm not as concerned about the eventual wind-down of that as I might otherwise be: Linux is the global lifeblood of enterprise computing, and there are a lot of other existing and potential sources of wealth in this world to employ Linux developers. A dispersion of this talent, with the inevitable shift in focus to things that are not strictly IBM's prerogatives, might have a real benefit for Linux.
Past that, software development has suddenly become cheaper in any case: Linux is in the optimal position to benefit greatly from the good parts of that, largely due a legacy of good leadership, so perhaps employed developer headcount doesn't have the importance it has always had.
In any case, I have every faith that Linux's future is not tightly coupled to the fate of whatever Red Hat withers into: there is too much at stake for too many well-resourced entities to permit Linux to suffer at the hands of IBM. If you need evidence for this, consider the outcome of the IBM's attempt to tighten their grip on the RHEL distribution, and the stampede to rapidly established alternatives this induced. If more of that is in Linux's future, so be it.
We'll see how that works in a world where someone/something with enough cash/tokens can say "hey there little AI buddy...why don't you code me up something that works exactly like Linux without all those pesky licensing things while I grab a beer". Personally, I think that's going to be kinda inevitable in the corporate world since I could say thing like "...oh, and add these 5 things Linux doesn't do, and don't reimpliment anything that isn't in this widget we want to sell. And write it in rust, because I heard that's cool." and instantly get a slimmed down, bespoke chunk of software that I/the corp/evil people can (so far?) claim ownership of.
...and have it fail spectacularly when deployed in an environment that requires reliability performance and high availability. Yes, I honestly can't wait to see those horror comedies unfold, but hopefully far away from me. :)
GP is saying (paraphrased) "I'm not worried about Linux because even if IBM (or Qualcomm, or ...) decides to close down their Linux efforts, the Linux devs will go someplace else and still contribute", which is true as far as it goes. My contention is it might not matter, because the big player can just as easily pay far fewer people to vibecode their own Linux workalike and take back control by displacing OG Linux in their tech ecosystem. When I can leverage all the previous work done to create Linux (aka The Hard Part), leave the licensing behind (not tested in court yet) and have my very own OS that I can vibecode/iterate any way I want independent of the Linux dev community, why would $BIGCOMPANY not consider doing that? How would it be it 'valueless' to one of these players (most of whom chafe at being in bed with the OSS community anyway)? On the contrary, what value would the Linux devs still have? Why would I even consider taking any contributions not from my own little AI playpen, since I'd be able to trivially say "hey AI...those crusty old Linux devs look like they got themselves a good idea...why don't you add that to our own private OS in the next spin. Think of a nifty marketing spin to advertise it and come up with some commercials to promote it. In the style of Micheal Bay this time".
Hasz · · focus · HN ↗
Redhat underpins many low-visibility, very important Linux projects, and most have no idea they are doing it. For example, look at kernel committers:
<a href="https://insights.linuxfoundation.org/project/korg/contributors?timeRange=past365days&start=2025-10-01&end=2026-10-01" rel="nofollow">https://insights.linuxfoundation.org/project/korg/contributo...
weighted by market cap, the disparity is even more severe imo.
There is more visible projects (eg Ansible) that are great, but with very lackluster monetization and little impetus for IBM to GAF.
These guys are pursuing the wrong strategy, they should be using super popular, high-mindshare projects to drive new wave of tailored business solutions leveraging existing consulting teams they already have (IBM revenue to hugely reliant on PS, 33%). Basically the largest "forward deployed eng" transition ever, backed by existing very strong open-source software and tailored (with Watson, dear god) as the "AI powered" engine to appease the shareholder gods. You would run over so many startups with poor penetration at the F2000 level.
topspin · · focus · HN ↗
I know IBM has been employing a large number of people to work on Linux. I'm not as concerned about the eventual wind-down of that as I might otherwise be: Linux is the global lifeblood of enterprise computing, and there are a lot of other existing and potential sources of wealth in this world to employ Linux developers. A dispersion of this talent, with the inevitable shift in focus to things that are not strictly IBM's prerogatives, might have a real benefit for Linux.
Past that, software development has suddenly become cheaper in any case: Linux is in the optimal position to benefit greatly from the good parts of that, largely due a legacy of good leadership, so perhaps employed developer headcount doesn't have the importance it has always had.
In any case, I have every faith that Linux's future is not tightly coupled to the fate of whatever Red Hat withers into: there is too much at stake for too many well-resourced entities to permit Linux to suffer at the hands of IBM. If you need evidence for this, consider the outcome of the IBM's attempt to tighten their grip on the RHEL distribution, and the stampede to rapidly established alternatives this induced. If more of that is in Linux's future, so be it.
kjs3 · · focus · HN ↗
Should be an interesting decade coming up.
pferde · · focus · HN ↗
smackeyacky · · focus · HN ↗
kjs3 · · focus · HN ↗
Yes...that is exactly the point I'm making.
GP is saying (paraphrased) "I'm not worried about Linux because even if IBM (or Qualcomm, or ...) decides to close down their Linux efforts, the Linux devs will go someplace else and still contribute", which is true as far as it goes. My contention is it might not matter, because the big player can just as easily pay far fewer people to vibecode their own Linux workalike and take back control by displacing OG Linux in their tech ecosystem. When I can leverage all the previous work done to create Linux (aka The Hard Part), leave the licensing behind (not tested in court yet) and have my very own OS that I can vibecode/iterate any way I want independent of the Linux dev community, why would $BIGCOMPANY not consider doing that? How would it be it 'valueless' to one of these players (most of whom chafe at being in bed with the OSS community anyway)? On the contrary, what value would the Linux devs still have? Why would I even consider taking any contributions not from my own little AI playpen, since I'd be able to trivially say "hey AI...those crusty old Linux devs look like they got themselves a good idea...why don't you add that to our own private OS in the next spin. Think of a nifty marketing spin to advertise it and come up with some commercials to promote it. In the style of Micheal Bay this time".
jasomill · · focus · HN ↗
What’s the point?
kjs3 · · focus · HN ↗