7 ms·

I'm not sure what Microsoft is getting with LinkedIn for $26bn. I know it is a little crazy, but I think they would have been better off buying Redhat for $15b

I'm not sure what Microsoft is getting with LinkedIn for $26bn. I know it is a little crazy, but I think they would have been better off buying Redhat for $15bn or Canonical (Ubuntu linux) for even cheaper.

dexterdog 10y ago
They still could. They do have a bit of cash.
Sylos 10y ago
I think, they just haven't bought those yet, because they could get a monopolization lawsuit for that. Red Hat and Canonical are among their biggest competitors in the OS market, as small as they are.
pmontra 10y ago
They're already doing the Ubuntu on Windows thing with Canonical, no need to buy them yet. Wait at least for the Extend phase.
levesque 10y ago
Buying Canonical would be very unwise. I'm pretty sure user rates would drop like hell on the day of the announcement. I know I would change my distro.
pjc50 10y ago
That would attract truly unprecedented levels of hostility and a declaration of war by segments of the Linux community.
- vidarh 10y ago
  Probably. On the other hand, Redhat kind of pulled up the drawbridge and focused on parts of the market that don't care so much with the RHEL / Fedora change. Of the major Linux distributions, I think Redhat is the one whose userbase would be least likely to be upset. A few years back it'd have been totally unthinkable, but today, given that MSFT has surprised repeatedly with a more friendly approach towards the open source community, and given that Redhat - while still contributing a lot - has pulled back in a sense, it would be less problematic. Wouldn't be trivial to pull off, by any means, though. I think if MS would like to pick up a major Linux vendor, they'd better spend a year and lots of money buttering up the community with more open source releases and PR first.
  - gtirloni 10y ago
    Red Hat pulled back how? As for buttering any Linux distribution, I think Microsoft has focused traditionally on SUSE (even announced an "alliance" back in '11).
    - vidarh 10y ago
      > Red Hat pulled back how? By focusing on the enterprise, they became much less visible for individual Linux users. Even though Fedora is still there, it was a huge shift in how engaged Redhat apppeared to those not directly involved with projects that Redhat are involved in. They still contribute massively, but they are much less visible outside of enterprise users than they used to be. Of course this is not all their doing - the rise of Ubuntu also contributed, but arguable Ubuntu would have had a much harder time if it wasn't for the Redhat shift.
- lagadu 10y ago
  So, just a typical day for Microsoft for the past ~20 years?

dexterdog 10y ago

They still could. They do have a bit of cash.

Sylos 10y ago

I think, they just haven't bought those yet, because they could get a monopolization lawsuit for that. Red Hat and Canonical are among their biggest competitors in the OS market, as small as they are.

pmontra 10y ago

They're already doing the Ubuntu on Windows thing with Canonical, no need to buy them yet. Wait at least for the Extend phase.

levesque 10y ago

Buying Canonical would be very unwise. I'm pretty sure user rates would drop like hell on the day of the announcement. I know I would change my distro.

pjc50 10y ago

That would attract truly unprecedented levels of hostility and a declaration of war by segments of the Linux community.

vidarh 10y ago
Probably. On the other hand, Redhat kind of pulled up the drawbridge and focused on parts of the market that don't care so much with the RHEL / Fedora change. Of the major Linux distributions, I think Redhat is the one whose userbase would be least likely to be upset. A few years back it'd have been totally unthinkable, but today, given that MSFT has surprised repeatedly with a more friendly approach towards the open source community, and given that Redhat - while still contributing a lot - has pulled back in a sense, it would be less problematic. Wouldn't be trivial to pull off, by any means, though. I think if MS would like to pick up a major Linux vendor, they'd better spend a year and lots of money buttering up the community with more open source releases and PR first.
- gtirloni 10y ago
  Red Hat pulled back how? As for buttering any Linux distribution, I think Microsoft has focused traditionally on SUSE (even announced an "alliance" back in '11).
  - vidarh 10y ago
    > Red Hat pulled back how? By focusing on the enterprise, they became much less visible for individual Linux users. Even though Fedora is still there, it was a huge shift in how engaged Redhat apppeared to those not directly involved with projects that Redhat are involved in. They still contribute massively, but they are much less visible outside of enterprise users than they used to be. Of course this is not all their doing - the rise of Ubuntu also contributed, but arguable Ubuntu would have had a much harder time if it wasn't for the Redhat shift.
lagadu 10y ago
So, just a typical day for Microsoft for the past ~20 years?