IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says(reuters.com)
reuters.com
IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says
https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/ibm-nearing-buyout-deal-hashicorp-wsj-reports-2024-04-23/
184 comments
Please file in a calm and orderly fashion toward the exits and remember: IBM killed Centos for profit.
Terraform users can pick up their new alternative here:
https://opentofu.org/
and for those of you with Vault, you can find your new alternative here:
https://openbao.org/
Terraform users can pick up their new alternative here:
https://opentofu.org/
and for those of you with Vault, you can find your new alternative here:
https://openbao.org/
>IBM killed Centos for profit
The community is better off with the combination of AlmaLinux + CentOS Stream.
AlmaLinux provides differentiation by supporting hardware and patches that Red Hat doesn't necessarily want to.
CentOS Stream provides a way for all downstream distros (Red Hat, Alma, Oracle, Rocky, whatever) to contribute back to the ecosystem in a way that is deeper than submitting bug reports to bugzilla.redhat.com
The latter point is something people really miss. CentOS was not much of an "open source" project in the same way that Android isn't much of an "open source" project. There was few ways to contribute directly beyond filing a bug report and waiting for Red Hat / Google to handle it. CentOS Stream is vastly more open as a project.
The community is better off with the combination of AlmaLinux + CentOS Stream.
AlmaLinux provides differentiation by supporting hardware and patches that Red Hat doesn't necessarily want to.
CentOS Stream provides a way for all downstream distros (Red Hat, Alma, Oracle, Rocky, whatever) to contribute back to the ecosystem in a way that is deeper than submitting bug reports to bugzilla.redhat.com
The latter point is something people really miss. CentOS was not much of an "open source" project in the same way that Android isn't much of an "open source" project. There was few ways to contribute directly beyond filing a bug report and waiting for Red Hat / Google to handle it. CentOS Stream is vastly more open as a project.
Wasn't the value of centos that it was bug-yor-bug compatible with RHEL but without the license fee requirement?
>bug-yor-bug compatible with RHEL
It was never quite that, but that was the theory.
The problem is because it was an exact clone of RHEL, it's somewhere between difficult and impossible to have a proper community around it. Like I said it kind of revolved around "file a bug to Red Hat, wait for someone to pick it up, and then wait more for it to be shipped, which will be months away at best and could be years if it's not a paying customer's priority"
It was never quite that, but that was the theory.
The problem is because it was an exact clone of RHEL, it's somewhere between difficult and impossible to have a proper community around it. Like I said it kind of revolved around "file a bug to Red Hat, wait for someone to pick it up, and then wait more for it to be shipped, which will be months away at best and could be years if it's not a paying customer's priority"
What I've seen people use CentOS for is testing a product intended to run on RHEL. For that, CentOS didn't need a separate community, and bugfixing at a pace different from RHEL would have been actively undesirable.
For that purpose, RHEL is completely free to begin with
Yeah RHEL has had a gratis developer license from their website for maybe a decade now?
Before that I would pay $49 a year for it.
Before that I would pay $49 a year for it.
As far as I understand, you still need to connect to the Red Hat license server, and you're limited to 16 machines. That's just stupidly unsuitable for a CI worker pool of hundreds of VMs being created from scratch for every run.
If you do pay for RHEL you can have free non production subscriptions. Of course it's probably suspicious to pay for 1 production and 20000 testing servers, but it's pretty good if you are too small to negotiate an unlimited-machine subscription and you want to use RHEL in production.
https://developers.redhat.com/articles/2022/07/06/what-quali...
https://developers.redhat.com/articles/2022/07/06/what-quali...
Yeah that’s something they’d want you to pay for.
I totally get why CentOS was useful. I was briefly involved with Rocky when it first was getting started.
I totally get why CentOS was useful. I was briefly involved with Rocky when it first was getting started.
Not for production purposes.
OP was talking about testing purposes.
But RHEL is free for limited production purposes also, to a maximum of 16 systems.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/red-hat-introduces-free-rhel-f...
But RHEL is free for limited production purposes also, to a maximum of 16 systems.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/red-hat-introduces-free-rhel-f...
> IBM killed Centos for profit.
That process began happening long before the IBM acquisition when Red Hat hired Karanbir Singh (CentOS's maintainer) in 2014.
That process began happening long before the IBM acquisition when Red Hat hired Karanbir Singh (CentOS's maintainer) in 2014.
What's the story behind that?
IIRC, I saw something about it on HN at the time, but did not read it, being busy.
IIRC, I saw something about it on HN at the time, but did not read it, being busy.
Red Hat had open source/community versions of their products, for example OpenShift Origin (now OKD) and RDO (for OpenStack). They wanted to use CentOS but it was not working well because release dates of CentOS were not predictable.
So they acquihired CentOS, but in doing that they changed its target from "community of users [that don't want to pay for RHEL]" to "community of developers that target RHEL". CentOS Stream is much better (though not perfect) for the latter population.
That said, there are many people using CentOS Stream in production (including myself).
So they acquihired CentOS, but in doing that they changed its target from "community of users [that don't want to pay for RHEL]" to "community of developers that target RHEL". CentOS Stream is much better (though not perfect) for the latter population.
That said, there are many people using CentOS Stream in production (including myself).
Got it, thanks.
What about Packer? Vagrant? Consul?
Is someone working on a Nomad fork?
I don't have any further insight, but looking at <https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/forks?include=active&page...> coughed up https://github.com/atlassian/nomad/branches although confusingly it says "updated last week" but browsing any one of the branches seems to be stupid old so I got nothing
Finding conceptual forks, e.g. $(git push --mirror ...) would be trickier but I bet sourcegraph could do it
Ultimately, the question boils down to: what risk are you driving down: hitching your wagon to a dead stack, not getting security updates, not getting PRs merged, $other?
Finding conceptual forks, e.g. $(git push --mirror ...) would be trickier but I bet sourcegraph could do it
Ultimately, the question boils down to: what risk are you driving down: hitching your wagon to a dead stack, not getting security updates, not getting PRs merged, $other?
Off topic but how is Nomad for running production workloads? My org has been wanting to push into containerization, but we're finding the complexity of k8s a high barrier to entry given our small team and lack of in house knowledge.
Is there a specific aspect of k8s that's causing friction along the learning curve? I'm assuming your referring to the developer side of the equation, not the ops/admin workflows.
Before jumping straight into production k8s, something you can mess around with is using Podman to generate[0] and run[1] Kubernetes resources that you can parse through and familiarize yourself with. Paired with Podman Desktop[2] can produce a nice graphical environment. After that you could take a look at more production-simulating environments with minikube[3], OpenShift Local[4] (very much recommend if you have the resources to run it), and the no-cost OpenShift Sandbox[5].
In general, the Red Hat Developer[6] site has a lot of good resources to learn from, both passive and interactive. I highly recommend going through the courses and tutorials available if it can help your team skill up (assuming k8s is the direction you want to go in).
[0] https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-generate.1....
[1] https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-kube.1.html
[2] https://podman.io/features | https://podman-desktop.io/
[3] https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/
[4] https://developers.redhat.com/products/openshift-local/overv...
[5] https://developers.redhat.com/developer-sandbox
[6] https://developers.redhat.com/
Before jumping straight into production k8s, something you can mess around with is using Podman to generate[0] and run[1] Kubernetes resources that you can parse through and familiarize yourself with. Paired with Podman Desktop[2] can produce a nice graphical environment. After that you could take a look at more production-simulating environments with minikube[3], OpenShift Local[4] (very much recommend if you have the resources to run it), and the no-cost OpenShift Sandbox[5].
In general, the Red Hat Developer[6] site has a lot of good resources to learn from, both passive and interactive. I highly recommend going through the courses and tutorials available if it can help your team skill up (assuming k8s is the direction you want to go in).
[0] https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-generate.1....
[1] https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-kube.1.html
[2] https://podman.io/features | https://podman-desktop.io/
[3] https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/
[4] https://developers.redhat.com/products/openshift-local/overv...
[5] https://developers.redhat.com/developer-sandbox
[6] https://developers.redhat.com/
Been running both nomad and k8s in prod for the last few years. Nomad has been stable and reliable to the point of replacing k8s in some projects because of how easy it is to work with and onboard developers.
If that is the driving force use a managed provider the AWS elastic container service or Google's app engine.
Maybe Incus[0] as an alternative instead of fork.
- [0] https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/docs/main/
- [0] https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/docs/main/
Do you know that OpenBao is actually funded by IBM?
I'm biased (co-founder) but you should take a look at Infisical for secret management: https://infisical.com
I'm biased (co-founder) but you should take a look at Infisical for secret management: https://infisical.com
As I said elsewhere, it's not. It's an open source project, under the Linux Foundation umbrella, with all of the good licensing that goes along with that. It has some contributors who are also IBM employees, but to say they're "funded by IBM" is a bit of a stretch.
FWIW, most of the code and docs contributions have come from non-IBMers [0]. That said, IBM has done a lot of great work building the foundation and initial community and without them, OpenBao wouldn't be here. :-)
Speaking for myself, but I do not get any monetary compensation from IBM and I suspect this is true for all of the other non-IBM contributors.
[0]: https://github.com/openbao/openbao/releases/tag/v2.0.0-alpha...
Speaking for myself, but I do not get any monetary compensation from IBM and I suspect this is true for all of the other non-IBM contributors.
[0]: https://github.com/openbao/openbao/releases/tag/v2.0.0-alpha...
I’m not happy about this but my silver linings are:
1) At least Ellison doesn’t end up with it
2) Consul should tend to bring down the aggregate complexity of IBM solutions just a little bit.
1) At least Ellison doesn’t end up with it
2) Consul should tend to bring down the aggregate complexity of IBM solutions just a little bit.
I would predict that IBM will cancel Consul and Nomad completely to focus on k8s.
Maybe. Or they could just completely opensource the projects.
It’ll be about terraform won’t it?
True story...At one point in time, IBM bought so many companies, they produced internally an audio CD, sales reps were supposed to listen to on their way to customers visits. Reminding the name of the company, and explaining what each company was about...
I find it hilarious how much this resonates with my time at AWS. Except it was for new service announcements, and video rather than a CD. History repeats.
Well, they also have Red Hat, HashiCorp is right up the same alley.
Which alley do you mean?
Jumped on the Java boat alongside Sun and Oracle, pivoting from Smalltalk into Java, contributions to the Linux kernel since 2000's, collaborations with Apple and Sony, helped porting Go toolchain into their micro and mainframes, acquired Red-Hat thus indirect contributions to all major Linux projects that Red-Hat works on,...
Back in the day I read that Eclipse was based on an IBM IDE for Smalltalk called VisualAge, which they ported to VisualAge for Java, which became Smalltalk.
A while ago, so some details may be wrong.
A while ago, so some details may be wrong.
"… IBM VisualAge for Smalltalk and IBM VisualAge for Java. Both of these products were written in Smalltalk. The IBM VisualAge Micro Edition product was the first serious and actually quite successful experiment with writing the entire IDE in Java. Many concepts found in Eclipse have been tried out in that product already. However, for third parties, it proved difficult to extend the product with new components …
A small team of experts set out to take the experiences of the previous years of designing and implementing development environments. The result was Eclipse, a platform designed from the ground up as an integration platform for development tools."
FAQ Where did Eclipse come from?
https://wiki.eclipse.org/FAQ_Where_did_Eclipse_come_from%3F
A small team of experts set out to take the experiences of the previous years of designing and implementing development environments. The result was Eclipse, a platform designed from the ground up as an integration platform for development tools."
FAQ Where did Eclipse come from?
https://wiki.eclipse.org/FAQ_Where_did_Eclipse_come_from%3F
One of those experts, Erich Gamma, is the main VSCode architect.
Wow.
One of the GoF guys, too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Gamma
One of the GoF guys, too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Gamma
>VisualAge for Java, which became Smalltalk.
Whoops! What a brain fart, or cosmic ray effect, or whatever :)
I meant to write:
>VisualAge for Java, which became Eclipse.
It was still possible to edit and correct my previous comment, but since people had replied already, I decided to correct myself in a reply to my own comment above.
Thanks, guys, for pointing out the mistake.
Whoops! What a brain fart, or cosmic ray effect, or whatever :)
I meant to write:
>VisualAge for Java, which became Eclipse.
It was still possible to edit and correct my previous comment, but since people had replied already, I decided to correct myself in a reply to my own comment above.
Thanks, guys, for pointing out the mistake.
They did a lot of different experiments with JIT as well, though I don’t know how much made it into other toolchains. In particular J9 was a sort of moral equivalent of PyPy.
On the downside they are materially responsible/accomplices to the crimes that are J2EE and XML ALL THE THINGS.
On the downside they are materially responsible/accomplices to the crimes that are J2EE and XML ALL THE THINGS.
I don't begrudge them XML even if I don't like how it looks. Json still doesn't have a matching schema story.
J2EE was created by Sun, based on a Objective-C framework.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Objects_Everywhe...
JSON and YAML keep trying to re-invent the nice tooling ecosystem from XML, badly.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Objects_Everywhe...
JSON and YAML keep trying to re-invent the nice tooling ecosystem from XML, badly.
Sun Proposed J2EE (and made a mess of it) but what it is and what it has been had a lot of chefs.
IBM had a lot to do with both XML and J2EE being used in the most Rube Goldbergian senses possible. They didn't invent XML either.
IBM had a lot to do with both XML and J2EE being used in the most Rube Goldbergian senses possible. They didn't invent XML either.
Lots of companies had a lot to to with J2EE and XML, they are both standards, designed by a consortium of companies.
Sun, Oracle, Weblogic, IBM, Red-Hat, Rational, Microsoft, Pivotal, Apache Foundation,....
And if I have to chose between XML, endless annotations, anemic JSON, YAML spaghetti, I will take XML, thank you very much.
Sun, Oracle, Weblogic, IBM, Red-Hat, Rational, Microsoft, Pivotal, Apache Foundation,....
And if I have to chose between XML, endless annotations, anemic JSON, YAML spaghetti, I will take XML, thank you very much.
They are almost 100 years old which is an accomplishment. I wonder how many they have left. I bet a big chunk of that depends on companies still running AS/400 systems.
"Infrastructure", which includes z mainframes (called out by name) and I assume iSeries also (though not called out), is the smallest segment of IBM's revenue.
See page 17: https://www.ibm.com/annualreport/assets/downloads/IBM_Annual...
See page 17: https://www.ibm.com/annualreport/assets/downloads/IBM_Annual...
Much, if not most, of their consulting revenue is for mainframe support and much of their "hybrid cloud" is just hosting mainframes.
There was an interesting point in the recent Acquired podcast about Microsoft vs IBM. Supposedly IBM revenue only decreased after 2012 and Microsoft only passed it in revenue in 2015.
My semi-educated guess is that mainframes are a much bigger chunk still.
(AS/400 is midrange. They are called something else now, I heard. Maybe I-series.)
A lot of those indispensable infrastructure systems we all depend on, such as insurance, income tax, etc., run on mainframes, as they have for decades now.
So don't diss big iron / Big Blue.
I, for one, hope they have many years left, though I guess they could do with improving their corporate culture and business practices some.
(AS/400 is midrange. They are called something else now, I heard. Maybe I-series.)
A lot of those indispensable infrastructure systems we all depend on, such as insurance, income tax, etc., run on mainframes, as they have for decades now.
So don't diss big iron / Big Blue.
I, for one, hope they have many years left, though I guess they could do with improving their corporate culture and business practices some.
Those z-boxes can comfortably run 5000 instances of Linux as your very own virtual data center. Makes you wonder what inference on mainframe would look like, though you don't have GPUs.
Do people use them for that, and is it cost-effective?
Aren’t they always fighting the last war?
IBM is good at selling to large organizations. Large organizations are risk-averse, and prefer not to buy bleeding edge. IBM is pretty much institutionally specialized to sell what was hot last year (or last decade).
People might make fun of this, but I'd like to note that there is a lot of very stable revenue in their business.
People might make fun of this, but I'd like to note that there is a lot of very stable revenue in their business.
I'd also point out that given just how bloody the bleeding edge of software development tooling is, only investing in things that have managed to stick around for a decade sounds pretty damn smart.
Hell, React alone has been through 3 or 4 different paradigms in the last 10 years.
Hell, React alone has been through 3 or 4 different paradigms in the last 10 years.
Makes sense when you put it like this. In which case HCP may even be too new for them.
Given the stock price… it had to be someone. Same for Gitlab soon I guess
I wonder if Microsoft grabs them.
Sad, because GitLab was great for awhile. Then they stopped fixing bugs and started adding unneeded features, and made their pricing very expensive.
Sad, because GitLab was great for awhile. Then they stopped fixing bugs and started adding unneeded features, and made their pricing very expensive.
Anyone want to guess who?
I'll start: Jetbrains?
I'll start: Jetbrains?
Atlassian
Still don't get why JetBrains hasn't been folded into the Alphabet family yet.
I’m failing to identify the benefit for the buyer here. What’s your reasoning?
Kotlin and Android Studio are intrinsic to the Android development experience.
Why pay for what they get for free, then?
That's a fair question. Still, you often see companies snap up those who build premier developer tools for their ecosystems.
Probably were waiting to see how the company dealt with the sanctions on Russia first.
Brains are twisted: JetBrains closed its last legal entity in St. Petersburg - https://www-dp-ru.translate.goog/a/2023/03/01/Mozgi_svernuli...
True, but I was expecting Google to have bought them like a decade ago!
Please no.
I know at least one person who left Red Hat for HashiCorp. I could imagine how they feel to be back(ish)
[deleted]
Been there (not Red Hat) it sucks.
IBM was sure good to someone I know. Some people might not appreciate a great job surrounded by brilliant inventors, even if the company has seem better days, but IBM taught them a lot (such as an absolute commitment to backwards compatibility and long-term support) early in their career and they will be forever grateful to them for those things.
Now, they have their own company and would never go back, but they still have respect for those who choose the steady paycheck, low-risk career, and great (actually pretty incredible) benefits.
Now, they have their own company and would never go back, but they still have respect for those who choose the steady paycheck, low-risk career, and great (actually pretty incredible) benefits.
First time I've heard the benefits at IBM described as incredible.
They're constantly doing small layoffs if not spinning off entire divisions. Even if you aren't personally affected, it's disheartening to find out when people you work with are the target of a "resource action". Their headcount has dropped 150K from 2010.
They did a weird sleight of hand a while ago where you only got a 401k match if you were employed at the end of the year. I see now that they've dropped all 401k matching and have shifted to some kind of small pension program instead.
They're constantly doing small layoffs if not spinning off entire divisions. Even if you aren't personally affected, it's disheartening to find out when people you work with are the target of a "resource action". Their headcount has dropped 150K from 2010.
They did a weird sleight of hand a while ago where you only got a 401k match if you were employed at the end of the year. I see now that they've dropped all 401k matching and have shifted to some kind of small pension program instead.
IBM is like a juicer that takes out all the delicious flavor out of a fruit.
Leaving nothing but a dried beetle husk.
It's fine. HashiCorp has done a good job of pre-draining any flavor it once had.
Could say the same of many acquisitions. Cisco used to do the same thing.
It is sad that ctrl labs got eaten by fb/meta. It used ML to sense your arm movements (and one employee figured out how to have a virtual 3rd arm).
Collected by zuckerberg and disappeared.
(and if it does come to something, you'll need to log in to use it)
It is sad that ctrl labs got eaten by fb/meta. It used ML to sense your arm movements (and one employee figured out how to have a virtual 3rd arm).
Collected by zuckerberg and disappeared.
(and if it does come to something, you'll need to log in to use it)
Reminding me of that really cool Regina Dugan f8 video from like 2017 or so. They were working on a haptic communication system so you could read texts with your skin and stuff
It’s not like they’re going after the best fruit, either.
>fruit
>beetle
TIL that genetic scientists have successfully crossed plants and animals! ;)
But, great comment. Upvoted.
>beetle
TIL that genetic scientists have successfully crossed plants and animals! ;)
But, great comment. Upvoted.
This seemed like an inevitability given the reliance on enterprise customers and the move to maximise the revenue from Terraform with the recent license change. They have made a round of layoffs, so at least some cost saving has already been done to make it more appealing for a sale. The main challenge from an acquisition like this will be maintaining the community around terraform providers, if that drops off, i'm not sure there will be as many developers coming into the hashicorp ecosystem.
> the move to maximise the revenue from Terraform with the recent license change
In fact, it makes me wonder if the point of the recent license change to maximize revenue may have been to make them a more attractive acquisition.
In fact, it makes me wonder if the point of the recent license change to maximize revenue may have been to make them a more attractive acquisition.
The Terraform providers, and the underlying library for building them, are still open source. This is why OpenTofu didn't have to fork them. Considering they're also used by Pulumi I don't see the provider community going away any time soon, but I definitely see them detaching themselves from Hashicorp.
Or - IBM mends the rift with OpenTofu for their own good.
The discussion here when the license change occurred, from people with throwaway accounts claiming to be from HashiCorp, was that Terraform revenue was not the motivator... it was because IBM was selling Vault.
Mitchell, one of the co founders, left HashiCorp in December 2023 [1]
It’s either terrible timing (missed on more money?) or he knew about it and decided months in advance that it’s not worth the trouble of staying on (ie, look at the aftermath of the RedHat and IBM acquisition).
[1] https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/mitchell-reflects-as-he-depar...
It’s either terrible timing (missed on more money?) or he knew about it and decided months in advance that it’s not worth the trouble of staying on (ie, look at the aftermath of the RedHat and IBM acquisition).
[1] https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/mitchell-reflects-as-he-depar...
Or possibly it’s completely unrelated and it’s just our brains looking for meaning where there’s none.
If his leaving is unrelated, that would fall under the first possibility of the parent comment, no?
Only if he really cared about that extra bit of money. I don't know him personally but from the outside he didn't look like he did.
It's not unrelated. They kicked him out or he just got sick of the company's direction. Or both.
Not a coincidence at all.
Not a coincidence at all.
he transitioned to IC way before he left
What's the aftermath of the Red Hat and IBM acquisition? I've been at Red Hat since 2009 myself, and have hardly seen the difference over the last five years.
We all know it's just made up stuff to feed the narrative of evil IBM making RH evil. Not even the plausible scenario of IBM changing the source code licencing of hashicorp software back to something genuinely open can change people's minds.
I don't think Mitchell has any shares still. At least I could not find him listed on insider transactions. He made billion with B when it went IPO and most likely cashed out near the top which coincidentally is when I bought (facepalm).
Back when Mitchell left, I commented the following "I hope Hashicorp will manage to find its stride and not end up as some bullet point in a long "solutions" portfolio of some software conglomerate.".
Hearing about the intention to sell and now IBM... well, that sucks.
Hearing about the intention to sell and now IBM... well, that sucks.
Reuters references a WSJ article. That article (gift link) is IBM Nears Deal for Cloud-Software Provider -- https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/ibm-nears-deal-for-cloud-...
If you were looking to standardize on IaC today, after reading this news - would you go with Terraform or OpenTofu? I honestly can't get a good read on how this will affect the future of Terraform.
OpenTofu. Pulumi is cool especially if you want to run "code" code and not declarative code but Pulumi is in some ways the next Hashicorp. We'll see if they can manage to build a business and not become lame and evil like Hashicorp. OpenTofu is 100% open source.
Honestly, if they built a real scripting engine into OpenTofu, I'd be overjoyed. As it stands though, the declarative code (HCL) isn't the ugliest.
Honestly, if they built a real scripting engine into OpenTofu, I'd be overjoyed. As it stands though, the declarative code (HCL) isn't the ugliest.
Pulumi is open source, and committed to Apache 2.0!
We liken our model to git and GitHub, building the best service for the Pulumi engine and related tools.
https://www.pulumi.com/blog/pulumi-hearts-opensource/
We liken our model to git and GitHub, building the best service for the Pulumi engine and related tools.
https://www.pulumi.com/blog/pulumi-hearts-opensource/
Im on team tofu.
Come to the webinar tmrw, not quite a scripting engine but multilang no-custom-provider custom function support
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/opentofuorg_native-lua-more-i...
Apologies for the LI link I’m a startup CEO
Come to the webinar tmrw, not quite a scripting engine but multilang no-custom-provider custom function support
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/opentofuorg_native-lua-more-i...
Apologies for the LI link I’m a startup CEO
Pulumi, cloudformation/arm-bicep, etc?
At least we still have OpenTofu. I wonder how the rest is going to get forked.
Ironically, IBM is behind the Vault fork (OpenBao). Way to negotiate!
And OpenBao's fork of Vault. There are non-IBM companies on the TSC.
I hope that's not true (or falls through). I have a good friend that works for HashiCorp. He's 42, and will undoubtedly be on the chopping block.
Do you mean he's too young for IBM, whose workforce has a median age of 48 years?
What does it have to do with him being 42?
Older, more expensive workers are targeted by IBM to be pushed out of the org. They run on cheap offshore, domestic visa, and younger labor, except near the top of the org.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ibm+ageism
https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=ibm+&job=&city=&year=2023
https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-a...
https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/15/ibm_ceo_pay_jumps_23/
https://www.google.com/search?q=ibm+ageism
https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=ibm+&job=&city=&year=2023
https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-a...
https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/15/ibm_ceo_pay_jumps_23/
IBM has a median age of 48 as of 2020. While it's true that they've repeatedly done stuff that smells a lot like age discrimination, it's still a pretty old company all things considered. Compare that to Google, Facebook, etc.
I work for Red Hat, acquired by IBM. None of the older developers working for Red Hat have been laid off. Actually developers as a group were mostly left intact by the one layoff we did have.
I work for Red Hat, acquired by IBM. None of the older developers working for Red Hat have been laid off. Actually developers as a group were mostly left intact by the one layoff we did have.
IBM doesn't like dinobabies.
If he's on the tech side he should be fine.
IBM is loaded with boomers with amazing jobs and pension plans that they're eager to dump if they can. They seem to want to keep good tech people while dumping the sweet deal boomers and non-tech where possible.
t. IBMer
IBM is loaded with boomers with amazing jobs and pension plans that they're eager to dump if they can. They seem to want to keep good tech people while dumping the sweet deal boomers and non-tech where possible.
t. IBMer
Thanks.
He's a really good guy, and an excellent, and enthusiastic tech. One of the better folks that I've had the privilege to work with.
The stories (and there's a lot of smoke) that I hear, coming from IBM, are not comforting.
He's a really good guy, and an excellent, and enthusiastic tech. One of the better folks that I've had the privilege to work with.
The stories (and there's a lot of smoke) that I hear, coming from IBM, are not comforting.
It always depends where you are. IBM is huge and mostly stupid, but they do have some good people and teams via their "hire by acquisition " strategy that are golden handcuffed.
While I appreciate the sentiment, surely that is not the reason why we should wish acquisitions to happen or fall through? There's something to be said about solving for maximum societal welfare—which may or may not be the case here, but in any event doesn't depend on any specific individual
> While I appreciate the sentiment, surely that is not the reason why we should wish acquisitions to happen or fall through?
I have another reason (whether or not that's "better" is arguable): because too big to fail is a thing and we've already seen what happens in other industries when big players buy out smaller ones.
I have another reason (whether or not that's "better" is arguable): because too big to fail is a thing and we've already seen what happens in other industries when big players buy out smaller ones.
I see "too big to fail" most commonly referenced when talking about the GFC of '08-'09. Nothing there happened because big players bought out smaller ones. Lehman Brothers wasn't even big, comparatively speaking
I think it's important to contemplate the human component of mergers. If lots of gainfully employed people get let go so that fewer people can consolidate expenses and raise shareholder value I think it should be considered as part of the decision making framework.
It is a consideration; redundancies are eliminated in acquisitions. It's capitalism; not laborism.
I think the parent comment may be a reference to IBM being caught in the past deliberately firing older workers.
Allegedly, but not proven, right?
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/ibm-wins-another-ru...
https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/23/ibm_supreme_court/
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/ibm-wins-another-ru...
https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/23/ibm_supreme_court/
The lawsuit hasn't been brought precisely because IBM fought tooth and nail to cut off access to the courts.
Not the sort of thing you do for the hell of it.
Not the sort of thing you do for the hell of it.
Yup.
So... was this the cause of the whole Terraform licensing change kerfuffle?
Perhaps more importantly, Vault.
Yes. IBM was reselling Vault as a service. Hashi couldn't.
It is hard to figure out what IBM is anymore
and their profile /strategy is.
They make totally awesome mainframes, which are spectacularly expensive and tends to be existing customers updating than new companies buying them. All the research and engineering that they put into the mainframes is astounding. They remain a critical part of a vast number of financial transactions in the world.
I keep hoping companies will discover that they are really great for a few things But they are certainly not fashionable, and it does not appear that IBM has much interest in making them fashionable.
They have the iSeries which I believe is the successor to the AS/400. That was one amazing and utterly reliable machine. But again, that was 20 years ago or more since I touched them. But they are certainly not fashionable, and it does not appear that IBM has much interest in making them fashionable.
Then they have a research division that used to do great things. They may still be I just have not followed it much. I do know that they are investing a lot into research about Quantum chips. (or at least I think so)
DB/2 used to be a great database system. It may still be, but I have had no exposure to it in over a decade. It does not show up often in DBMS comparisons. But it is certainly not fashionable, and it does not appear that IBM has much interest in making it fashionable.
They have their cloud services But it is certainly not fashionable, and it does not appear that IBM has much interest in making it fashionable or ???? I know they are selling hybrid solutions for people with mainframe to run some things in the IBM cloud.
They have at least 4 operating systems. z/OS, AIX and RedHat (well that one is quite different) and whatever the iSeries run these days.
The must have a research park somewhere that invents new was to do licensing and making things even more expensive. Possibly some cooperating with Oracle :p
They have whatever their consulting arms is called now. I have been terribly disappointed with the consultants i have interacted with from there but I may have been unlucky.
They have RedHat and now (maybe) Hasicorp.
RedHat+Hasicorp goes into the cloud? + adds leverage to their consulting business.
What is the overall strategy though. They have so many different things but they dont seem to push them in a collective way into something new and wonderful.
They make totally awesome mainframes, which are spectacularly expensive and tends to be existing customers updating than new companies buying them. All the research and engineering that they put into the mainframes is astounding. They remain a critical part of a vast number of financial transactions in the world.
I keep hoping companies will discover that they are really great for a few things But they are certainly not fashionable, and it does not appear that IBM has much interest in making them fashionable.
They have the iSeries which I believe is the successor to the AS/400. That was one amazing and utterly reliable machine. But again, that was 20 years ago or more since I touched them. But they are certainly not fashionable, and it does not appear that IBM has much interest in making them fashionable.
Then they have a research division that used to do great things. They may still be I just have not followed it much. I do know that they are investing a lot into research about Quantum chips. (or at least I think so)
DB/2 used to be a great database system. It may still be, but I have had no exposure to it in over a decade. It does not show up often in DBMS comparisons. But it is certainly not fashionable, and it does not appear that IBM has much interest in making it fashionable.
They have their cloud services But it is certainly not fashionable, and it does not appear that IBM has much interest in making it fashionable or ???? I know they are selling hybrid solutions for people with mainframe to run some things in the IBM cloud.
They have at least 4 operating systems. z/OS, AIX and RedHat (well that one is quite different) and whatever the iSeries run these days.
The must have a research park somewhere that invents new was to do licensing and making things even more expensive. Possibly some cooperating with Oracle :p
They have whatever their consulting arms is called now. I have been terribly disappointed with the consultants i have interacted with from there but I may have been unlucky.
They have RedHat and now (maybe) Hasicorp.
RedHat+Hasicorp goes into the cloud? + adds leverage to their consulting business.
What is the overall strategy though. They have so many different things but they dont seem to push them in a collective way into something new and wonderful.
I've worked in a financial company running on mainframes. They were the least reliable part of the whole organization. The only reason they're still around is they've become hostages of the mainframe. My experience is that nobody actually likes the mainframe or respects it. They just tolerate it.
Being held hostage I can understand and see that point of view.
When it comes to IBM z/series not being reliable though that is certainly not my experience. Do you know which generation this was? Were they quite old?
Were there repeated hardware failures?
Operating system? program crashes?
When it comes to IBM z/series not being reliable though that is certainly not my experience. Do you know which generation this was? Were they quite old?
Were there repeated hardware failures?
Operating system? program crashes?
I'm sure the mainframe itself is ironclad. It's the programs that crashed all the time, the fact they couldn't scale the load to match growth in time, they couldnt get developers to make updates at the volume required. As a platform for the business it was as stable and reliable as sand in a hurricane.
“Red Hat goes into the cloud” sounds like something that hasn’t happened yet. IBM bought red hat (largest historical software acquisition at the time) due to its position in hybrid cloud.
synergy with Red Hat if this acquisition is done well
The IBM stock being below where it was in 2013 probably means it won't be.
I fail to see how 2013 has anything to do with what the OP said. RH was acquired in 2019. Stock is up $50 since then.
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What do you mean? This seems to contradict https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IBM/ibm/stock-pric...
It won't.
I'm not sure which side I pity the most
Well, not who I was hoping would acquire and not for the price. Still down 30% on my $HCP investment.
I'm underwater on it too, was hoping to at least only take a 10/20% haircut. Where'd you see the price?
Sorry, I don’t think price has been announced. I bought more shares today (basically gamble) that the deal goes through and it’s higher than $30 share. Not financial advice :-).
Sold out of half my position today, fingers crossed for 40/50 deal price. Either way, I'll have lost a lot of money on this one. That said it was a pure emotional buy because I wanted to support Mitch and Armon, two dudes I'd consider friends and generally awesome dudes, so if I'm gonna lose money anywhere, may as well have been betting on some buddies. :) :)
First Red Hat, Now HashiCorp. Oh dear.
We all know what happens when the acquisition closes...
We all know what happens when the acquisition closes...
I contacted IBM regarding looking RH services, I couldn't even get someone to setup a meeting to sell me something after weeks with a sales drone. Purely inept.
Death to anything IBM.
Death to anything IBM.
Microsoft will buy Docker.
Podman is better.
They can have docker desktop. That thing is absolute trash
let them
[deleted]
Now announced publicly as finalized: https://newsroom.ibm.com/2024-04-24-IBM-to-Acquire-HashiCorp...
[deleted]
RIP
Soon, from the acquired party:
"Our incredible journey" ...
https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
In earlier years, many of them literally had those words in their final blog posts or emails to their users.
Now some of them seem to have got wise to the Tumblog above, so are changing their words, though not their meaning.
"Our incredible journey" ...
https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
In earlier years, many of them literally had those words in their final blog posts or emails to their users.
Now some of them seem to have got wise to the Tumblog above, so are changing their words, though not their meaning.
vmware and ibm just killing off anything halfway cool
opentofu now's your time to shine (also pick a better name)
Url changed from https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/ibm-nears-deal-for-cloud-...
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RIP
This is why we can't have nice things.
This is why we can't have nice things.
Beyond a certain size corporations shouldn't be allowed to acquire companies.
Why? There's nothing inherently bad about acquisitions
In fact, strong (~free) capital markets in which acquisitions happen frequently allow for more efficient (~optimal) allocation of resources over the long run, even if any single acquisition may not be locally optimal
In fact, strong (~free) capital markets in which acquisitions happen frequently allow for more efficient (~optimal) allocation of resources over the long run, even if any single acquisition may not be locally optimal
> In fact, strong (~free) capital markets in which acquisitions happen frequently allow for more efficient (~optimal) allocation of resources
I argue that's an opinion.
I also argue that allowing for does not mean ensures.
I also argue that, in practice, acquisitions happening freely typically result in "more efficient" allocation of humans to the detriment of those humans. Also, "more efficient" allocation of resources often increases the cost of those resources to other humans consuming those resources.
So yes, it's a valid opinion but in practice the stated results are infrequently achieved and come with significant costs that aren't accounted for in a purely free market situation.
I argue that's an opinion.
I also argue that allowing for does not mean ensures.
I also argue that, in practice, acquisitions happening freely typically result in "more efficient" allocation of humans to the detriment of those humans. Also, "more efficient" allocation of resources often increases the cost of those resources to other humans consuming those resources.
So yes, it's a valid opinion but in practice the stated results are infrequently achieved and come with significant costs that aren't accounted for in a purely free market situation.
[deleted]
With what reasoning?
What's the value to society of having large companies get larger?
IBM is clearly running on fumes by now. Extending its life by pulling down more small companies with them only makes things worse for everyone.
IBM is clearly running on fumes by now. Extending its life by pulling down more small companies with them only makes things worse for everyone.
If society doesn't value what IBM produces then they'll go out of business. There are many factors to optimal organization size, and there are different ways of handling acquisitions that can preserve the acquired organization to varying extents. I work for an org that got acquired by IBM and my job (and org) has been remarkably unaffected. Just different folks enjoying the profits.
Like all things, there is much more nuance than "big corporation bad."
Like all things, there is much more nuance than "big corporation bad."
What's the value to society of large companies not getting larger? What is even the relevance? Does everything have to be judged in terms of its value to society, and if so, why? Should we talk about your value to society?
You're arguing for a draconian regulatory response (it sounds like) to what should be a market issue.
You're arguing for a draconian regulatory response (it sounds like) to what should be a market issue.
They kill competition by bundling stuff together and increasing the price.
Say what you will about big blue, they repeatedly seem to know who to acquire in order to buy themselves another 10 years of relevance.