
Ask HN: What's the Future of Red Hat Developer Post IBM Acquisition? - friendscallmejw
https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2019/07/09/preserving-the-red-hat-developer-experience/
======
bmicklea
I’m Brad Micklea and I lead Red Hat’s Developer Business Unit, which covers
developer evangelism, our developer program at developers.redhat.com, and our
developer tools. All these facets of our business, as with Red Hat more
generally, will remain independent from IBM. This means that…

\- You’ll still bump into our fantastic Red Hat developer relations team at
events, meetups and keynotes.

\- The Red Hat developer program—including the site, blog, and our social
media channels—will remain independent and continue to focus on great open
source software and culture.

\- If you’re a member of the developer program, you’ll continue to enjoy free
access to Red Hat software downloads, eBooks, events and great content.

I’m sure there is some nervousness in the developer community with this
announcement. I welcome your questions and will be monitoring this thread and
replying to as many as I can over the coming day or so.

~~~
sdinsn
Thanks for offering to answer questions.

Does IBM have any plan to move any of Red Hat's workers offshore?

What exactly, from your perspective, is IBM's expectation of this investment?
Surely, IBM plans to have greater integration between IBM products/services
and Red Hat products/services?

~~~
bmicklea
I can't really speak to business or HR questions. My role is focused on our
relationship with developers. What I can say...We are a distinct entity in IBM
and the only person reporting to an IBMer is Jim (our CEO) who now reports to
Ginny (IBM CEO). We retain control over our associates. That said, the actions
taken in the coming months and years will provide the real proof.

Speaking to integration. In terms of the Red Hat developer tools portfolio
(which is ~15 tools and plugins), and a mix of Red Hat supported products and
upstream open source projects - there is no change to our roadmap.

We are committed to continuing to invest deeply in open source as we have from
Red Hat's inception.

We are going to continue to publish and support IDE plugins for VS Code [1],
JetBrains [2] and Eclipse [3] - even if they compete with IBM plugins.

We will also continue to offer CodeReady Workspaces for the OpenShift
Kubernetes platform [4]. I expect this will be of increasing interest to IBM
customers as they adopt OpenShift more aggressively. The open source upstream
project for this offering (Eclipse Che [5]) is also an area that has seen
increasing IBM participation over the past year.

In open source communities there continues to be collaboration around the
Eclipse Foundation's Cloud Development portfolio [6]. Be on the lookout for
some announcements here in the coming months.

Similarly there's interest from IBM in continuing to create open source
language servers that adhere to the Language Server Protocol [7] that the Red
Hat tools could consume.

[1]
[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/publishers/redhat](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/publishers/redhat)
[2] [https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/12030-openshift-
connect...](https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/12030-openshift-connector-by-
red-hat) [3]
[https://marketplace.eclipse.org/user/jtools/listings](https://marketplace.eclipse.org/user/jtools/listings)
[4] [https://developers.redhat.com/products/codeready-
workspaces/...](https://developers.redhat.com/products/codeready-
workspaces/overview) [5]
[https://github.com/eclipse/che](https://github.com/eclipse/che) [6]
[https://www.eclipse.org/ecd/](https://www.eclipse.org/ecd/) [7]
[https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-
protocol/impleme...](https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-
protocol/implementors/servers/)

------
workingpatrick
I've been through an acquisition in the past where the purchasing company told
us that we'd remain independent and that "we like what you're doing, that's
why we purchased the company, we don't want to change anything". This was true
for roughly 6 months, then sweeping business and cultural changes happened.

Do you have any assurances that what you've been told, regarding independence
will remain true? If so, are those assurances any more concrete than the
initial promise of independence?

Not trying to be negative, but telling a company that's been acquired that
things will stay the same, seems to be one of the oldest corporate lies in the
book.

Thoughts? Thanks for your post.

~~~
bmicklea
There are no guarantees in life and I'm in technology because I like
change...but when the announcement came across my email in October I was
nervous for some of the same reasons.

The assurances I have come from several angles. The public statements from
both Jim (our CEO), Ginny (IBM CEO) and Arvind (SVP Cloud Products @IBM). You
can see those here: CEO: [https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/jim-whitehurst-email-
red-hatt...](https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/jim-whitehurst-email-red-hatters-
red-hat-ibm-acquisition-closing) Arvind: [https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/qa-
ibms-landmark-acquisition-...](https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/qa-ibms-
landmark-acquisition-red-hat)

But I always put more trust in my own interactions and I've had an opportunity
now to work with quite a few of my new colleagues in IBM on both the
engineering and business side. What I have seen from them is humility and
curiosity about our business - there has been no arrogance. This has been true
of their words and their actions so far. To me this is important because I
think it's as a result of arrogance on the part of the acquirer that many
deals go bad post-close.

~~~
feminintendo
Hope springs eternal in the hearts of men. Here's the thing: We have a LOT of
evidence that those corporate promises mean nothing. There is a vast history
inside and out of IBM of exactly this pattern of everyone saying nothing will
change and then everything changes.

What you are saying to us is that the only reason you think nothing will
change is that you really, really believe the IBM people. (Just like Palmer
Luckey:[https://thenextweb.com/wp-
content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/03/...](https://thenextweb.com/wp-
content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/03/occulus.jpg.)) But that's even less than
what other companies have been able to offer skeptics. But we know

"Seventy percent of U.S. acquisitions in the United States negatively impact
the acquiring company’s results, sometimes immediately, and often continuing
many years after purchase. Approximately 40 percent of the acquisitions of the
last 10 years brought devastating business results. In about 80 percent of
such cases, product or service, market share, and cultural impact are far
below the goals anticipated in the beginning."
[https://media.terry.uga.edu/socrates/publications/2011/07/bi...](https://media.terry.uga.edu/socrates/publications/2011/07/bidder1_1.pdf)

YOU might be convinced, but you haven't given anyone a reason to believe it.

~~~
bmicklea
From my experience the only real proof that will convince people comes from
the actions that are taken from now forward. I'd ask that if you believe these
actions are harmful to developers or open source communities let me know
@bradmicklea on Twitter.

------
lloydatkinson
RIP RedHat, and probably CentOS and Fedora too... eventually.

~~~
arlemi
This isn't a question, but this may stil help with your doubts:
[https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2019/07/09/preserving-
the...](https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2019/07/09/preserving-the-red-hat-
developer-experience/)

TL;DR: Nothing changes!

------
samir2k05
Not a question, but just a suggestion. You should probably have an AMA on
reddit. They seem to be more vocal on this deal.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/cb0qac/ibm_clo...](https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/cb0qac/ibm_closes_landmark_acquisition_of_red_hat_for_34/)

~~~
friendscallmejw
We will. Keep an eye out for one in a few weeks.

HN hits a bit faster than Reddit does and it's where a lot of our members hang
out.

Thanks for the suggestion - Always valued.

