https://archive.fo/X14KK
>Summary: Red Hat’s decision to sell itself to IBM really stinks; the only upside is, the buyer could be worse because Red Hat had hired many managers from Microsoft, its sites are sometimes composed by Microsoft staff and Red Hat routinely promotes .NET (the hallmarks of Microsoft entryism)
>THE largest GNU/Linux vendor is about to be sold and passed over to the largest booster of software patents. Red Hat being Red Hat (a key contributor), it it getting a blank cheque on this just because it wasn’t Oracle or Amazon or Microsoft that bought Red Hat (and Red Hat reportedly reached out to Microsoft for a bidding opportunity before closing the deal with IBM). Red Hat cannot ignore IBM’s terrible record on patent policy and bullying. Is Microsoft interested in Canonical? Microsoft already announced losses several times in the recent past due to largely failed (unprofitable) acquisitions. We don’t mean to bash Red Hat over things like systemd because quite frankly many people do so already, but how can Red Hat carry on pretending that IBM isn’t an inherently incompatible suitor from a legal perspective? As recently as days ago a patent maximalist at Law 360 revealed that IBM is still shaking down small online retailers using software patents and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) refuses to get involved after an inter partes review (IPR). Some readers of ours go further* and allege that IBM sabotaged Red Hat just to buy it ‘on the cheap’.