former IBM dev here (6 years in different areas). I hope they let you work on an island and don't force you to use their tooling/approve listed of open source software.
IBM has long embraced the OSS community (I loved LTC), but the process to release/use anything OSS was not good (to put it nicely) and was one of the many reasons I left.
I worked on a project that was on an island, and while it was more efficient than normal IBM dev, it was still 10x slower and tons of red tape then what was required to make a competitive product (and stay competitive). IBM is big and ultimately has to protect themselves - IMO ultimately it gets in your way of making a good/competitive product.
I like what StrongLoop does for the node community, and I do indeed hope you are successful and nothing changes. But to be honest I am very skeptical.
Current IBM dev here (but only speaking anecdotally for myself and my project), can confirm that when we were acquired they let our product and policies remain and did not "blue wash" the project. I would assume the same will occur for StrongLoop and their software practices will probably continue mostly unfettered.
I hope it works out for StrongLoop. When a company I worked for was purchased by IBM, about 3/4 of the engineering staff left once we heard about "Work Life Integration (tm)". It's really hard to work inside Big Blue when you are used to the freedom provided by a small company.
A quick google search seems to indicate that IBM wanted to allow their employees more flexibility with their schedules and ability to take leaves. I don't understand how this is a bad thing.
The problem was their justification. It went something along the lines of "Employees are often thinking about their personal lives while at work, so they should also be thinking about their work life while at home."
I'm sure the intentions were good, but the presentation was terrible. Also, it was only one of many factors, but its a catchy line so I chose to call that one out.
Other include:
* Far worse benefits package and no attempt/willingness to make us whole in that regard
* About half the team was told they would no longer be eligible for raises because their salaries were above the top of their IBM pay band
* Several people lost large amounts of 401k matching because they missed their partial vesting date for that year (some by a few weeks) because the transition was done as being fired and then hired again
* Likewise we were not eligible to start contributing to the IBM 401k for some amount of time
* The IP agreement was Draconian (and we aren't in a state with nice moonlighting laws)
* They took away our office's coffee budget, which seems small and petty but it was a damned nice thing to have
* Two of the worst performers were promoted to be engineering managers because they didn't know what else to do with them....
I was only there for a few months after the merger. Talking to some who lasted longer made me very happy to have left. In all about 3/4 of the engineering team was gone within 9 months.
I worked for IBM for a period and all the teams I was around were very family-friendly when it came to work/life balance. Much more so than other younger/cooler tech companies I've worked for and read about. There were downsides at IBM for sure, but this wasn't one of them.
Huh. When Blekko got acquired by IBM Watson, all of the employees thought that IBM's policies about flexible working hours and locations were great. So far I'm the only techie who's departed.
We were in their software services vertical (I forget the name)...the one that had never turned a profit and wasn't sexy. I've known one person who had a great experience on the Watson team. So maybe its a different experience?
Were you on a CAMSS team? That seems to be the best area inside of IBM right now as it's a strategic growth area. This includes the Watson PS team I'm on.
Were you really left alone, though? As in, not even forced to use Lotus Notes? Because even that kind of small-bore enterprisation can destroy the culture of a small tech-focused company.
About your point about Lotus Notes: I interned at IBM 3 times, and was never forced to use Lotus Notes. No one whom I worked with at IBM used Lotus Notes either. We used either Open Office or MS Office.
The most popular IBM software we used was SameTime for instance messaging and it was actually not bad at all.
Just as a counterpoint: when I interned at IBM, we were forced to use various Lotus products including Notes. Lotus Symphony was especially painful, and we begged to be allowed to just use Powerpoint (and were told, emphatically, "No.")
You might be thinking about the Office-like companion to Notes, Symphony. AFAIK (going from some Name/Location/BU-looking email addresses) IBM still uses Lotus Notes for email.
Lotus Notes is actually quite good when used properly and in moderation, but it really does not set a positive tone culturally.
Notes is _terrible_ from a UI perspective. The server side (domino) though was light-years ahead of anything in terms of ideas at least. Combining a CA, distributed, document-oriented database(think mongodb, couchdb), LDAP server, web server and mail server that supports IMAP, POP, SMTP as well as the proprietary encrypted notes protocol.
painful flashback! or, I guess, "trigger" in the parlance of today.
I worked for a biotech software company some years ago that wasn't even bought by IBM but as part of becoming an "IBM Business Partner" agreed to use Lotus Notes to replace a bunch of existing stuff we were using for email/collaboration/etc.
Notes isn't even bad or anything but it was no better than the tools we were already using for the tasks we were using them for, and because it is (or was? haven't used it since) a big all-encompassing "enterprise" system it took like a half-year migration period to get everyone to the point where we could do the same sorts of things we could before, not really any better or worse, just different and incredibly disruptive during the transition.
(also, is this mkozlows from qt3? haven't posted there in a long time, used to use the handle Coca Cola Zero).
Curious - how long ago did they acquire you? Your software get rolled into an IBM product or is it self standing? They let you continue to use your productive tools (asana,github,slack etc)?
Private or public repos? From my experience collaborating in public (which will continue to be critical in this space) was painful/impossible in some scenarios
As much as I fear this will drag StrongLoop, I feel that this is an excellent fit. StrongLoop has been focused on building "Enterprise" tools and module around node, as well as working on whitelisting/reviewing various modules... This is a good fit for IBM and their clients who are inclined to also want to have "approved" or "certified" modules to be able to use separately from the rest of npm.
As much as I like the power/openness of npm, a lot of corporate environments move more slowly... modules need to be cleared by legal and usually limited to specific versions. Having more resources to do this is a good thing and can only help people who are working for financial institutions (as an example).
> And it’s not just Node.js. Maybe you haven’t looked at what IBM is doing with open source lately. I was surprised when I dug in. For example, did you know they are leading contributors to:
Linux
OpenStack
Cloud Foundry
Docker
plus many Apache projects like Spark, Cordova and Hadoop
and of course, Node
Speaking just about Docker and not commenting on this post in particular: IBM employs at least 5 people who dedicate their time to working upstream. Duglin, as an example is #11 on the contribution graph in your list
IBM are working on the runtimes for things like Node, Spark, Python, Docker, and augmenting them to perform well on IBM platforms and integrate with IBMs enterprise monitoring and diagnostic tools.
Some of these augmentations have been contributed back to the main projects.
What is it about these posts that bring out the HN contingent who think themselves firebrand skeptics? This is basically a marketing piece, what good is fact-checking it
I've done a fair bit of PR writing myself so I'm happy to be skeptical and understand the line between marketing speak and reality.
The problem here is the audience is clearly the developer community (which I'm also a part of). Developer communities have a right be skeptical about key acquisitions of their open source dependancies. It can have massive commercial implications on software design decisions, etc.
Open source is built on trust. Dubious communication does nothing but erode that trust.
Yeah but we have 'freedom' here in the US </sarcasm>.
I love French restrictions on adverts for medications as well, they're very stringent. As a dual US/EU citizen, I never run out of interesting divergences like the one you've pointed out.
From the customer side - I dealt with Netezza and Softlayer before and after IBM acquisition. In both cases an almost palpable drain in support and intelligence. I hate to say it like that as i know that there are brilliant folks in IBM (Watson, etc)
Softlayer and Netezza in different ways were smart, nimble and fearless companies. You had real relationships with the engineers. I got to know Netezza folks in Massachusetts, Poland and Australia - some of the smartest folks I've met. They shared scripts and passionate expertise.
IBM took it over and the bureaucracy set in. The term "TAM" brings tears of rage to my eyes... Opening a support ticket is about as hard as applying for a mortgage online. And they want to have these endless conference calls with 7 or 8 folks from their side. And nothing gets done.
I am embarrassed about the way I have acted on these calls. I have called folks out and out liars. I have screamed at and bashed conference phones.
Maybe it would have been better if I hadn't known the Netezza folks - they were good.
And Softlayer...
I used to be able to call a guy down in texas and after a 20 minute phone call have a cluster of servers ordered. Once did a hadoop cluster this way. Go off and have lunch come back and the servers would we ready by the afternoon.
And now: 2 major outages in the past 2 months. No communication - in both cases entirely their fault. Power failure and network misconfig causing an arp storm. Ignored for hours while we submitted tickets and called support... Nightmare.
And an absurd situation where their security dept threatened us with taking an haproxy server offline due to a clean-mx false positive - even after the tireless guy running clean-mx emailed to that effect...
It became apparent in the discussions following this event that the TAM and sales support which has had our account for years, knew nothing about our business.
Just horrible bureacracy and bad service.
So I have had really negative experiences with 2 IBM acquired companies. Hopefully it will be better for StrongLoop.
For anyone affected - watch for the good folks shedding off.
I hear you on the support side. I used to work for a company that used a product that was bought by IBM. Before that, you could pick up the phone and talk to the lead developer. After, you opened a support ticket online and waited 24-48 hours for a response from someone in Costa Rica or India. Now I work at IBM with this same product, and even I as an employee who supports the product, even I have to go through the same Level 1 tech support crap.
However, the cash injection made the core product worlds better, and it was good to begin with. Support got worse, the product got better. It's almost an even balance.
I used to work with an old IBMer who used to say "it's no accident that IBM nearly collapsed at the same time as the Soviet Union did". Lou Gerstner famously rescued IBM from oblivion by turning it into a consultancy led company, and moving the focus away from mainframes. This is just a case of IBM snaffling up the latest cool thing so they can sell consulting services.
Actually, System z (mainframes) still accounts for a quarter of IBM's revenue and about half of its profits. [1] At least, that was the case in 2012. I suspect that hasn't changed much with IBM's recent announcement of the LinuxONE. In fact, IBM contributed significant effort get Node.js (and thereby V8) ported to s390x. [2]
It's too painful for people to check their facts before declaring mainframes dead or something IBM is leaving. As you said, they're incredibly profitable. Same thing happened with OpenVMS, which turned out much profit for HP despite little investment. Next they'll be telling us Group Bull, Unisys, and Fujitsu are similarly scraping by in the mainframe business. And NonStop and IBM i are on verge of cancellation. And blah blah blah.
I'm sure we'll be hearing the same crap in a decade while said crap is posted via a service that imtegrates with a COBOL app on a mainframe. ;)
> the Russian decision in the late sixties to develop as their next national computer series a bit-compatible copy of the IBM 360 —the greatest American victory in the cold war!—.
Despite my other comment, I do regularly post that one. Hilarious. Anyone that saw better architectures (eg Burroughs) knows that he's probably right that cloning 360 wasted a prime opportunity to kick IBM's ass with technically superior, state-funded product. There's a chance they'll make a come-back in near future, though.
Both IBM and USSR were bloated, inefficient, slow moving, hierarchical, bureaucratic organisations. Gorbachev failed to save his org, despite heroic efforts. Gerstner did rescue IBM. Maybe if Gorby had saved the USSR Putin would still be working for the KGB in Berlin...
If you're trying to relieve fears, the first paragraph does not help.
"IBM has identified Node.js as an important part of the future of enterprise middleware and StrongLoop’s technology and expertise as pivotal to their strategy to help companies fully unlock the value of their existing IT investments and legacy data with APIs."
Seems like too much fluff - both the acquirer generating it and the acquisition itself. It would be helpful to see why/where one would use node.js when other platforms support many more workloads well than just pure I/O bound ones. In the "enterprise middleware", going native (C++) or managed (JVM/CLR) brings with it a much richer ecosystem alongwith a more robust runtime that can better support other workloads that entail for example cpu binding. It's hard to see a real need for node.js as it seems to not do anything significantly better than other platform options.
Recently I got heavily into node-red[0] after playing with a ti sensortag[1], and I'm really amazed at what it can do, and that it is open source and actively used by IBM in bluemix.
Now they acquired another heavy weight in the js world, I wonder what is their next step.
On a side note, to the audience: have you looked at node-red, what do you think of it?
Damnit! That's one of the companies I found searching for a physical version of cloud hosting. Looked promising. Now they're IBM. (sighs) Going to have to delete them from my bookmarks...
Sucks that IBM has this effect. If they didn't, esp if had opposite effect, they could be the biggest and most awesome tech company in existence.
It is not just one anecdotal story. I used to work for IBM, then have them as a client, then was a business partner, and have worked on their software for over 20 years.
Based on all my experience, they are slow and expensive, and over-build their teams. They do deliver the final product and it will work, which is why people hire them, but they do not do it efficiently.
This announcement fits along with Node.js 4.0's release containing a commitment to an 18-month roadmap in giving Node.js a greater maturity.
As much as I like to think I have chosen Node.js purely for its merits, having a wide community who adopts a platform brings a few perks:
- Hiring developers requires less of a gamble on their part. Elixir looks very promising and probably has a lot of advantages over Node.js thanks to it's Erlang foundation but it makes it harder to assemble a team—I hope this changes as I wish the Erlang/Elixir folks all the best.
- There is a great amount of wealth contained in the package repository NPM. Before Node.js, this was a great strength of Perl's CPAN (and TeX' CTAN before that).
- Having large organizations adopt a platform will eventually increase OSS contributions.
I could be mistaken but I don't see Node.js following the bureaucratic of Java's JSR if it continues to adopt a lean and mean approach akin to UNIX tools (do 1 thing well).
Despite both being big enterprise corporations, IBM is nothing like Oracle. Oracle is pretty much one huge ego trip swallowing everything like the Borg.
If anything this is a strong validation of Node.js in the enterprise space. This is actually good news for anyone working within the enterprise trying to use a different technology set. It makes selling Node to a CTO a bit easier (even if you choose not to use StrongLoop).
Hmm, that the acquisition would mean anything for node directly seems off. At least, the blog post seemed to indicate that this wasn't meant to be about IBM buying influence. I wasn't a customer and not particularly keen on the enterprise focus of strongloop but I thought you had a really good thing going with loopback. Not sure what to think of it now... I was in a startup that got acquired by a huge multinational and it was shocking how quickly we went from nimble to gridlock.
Considering the development history of Express mostly consisted of cutting down on features and streamlining the core, it should be easy to notice whether the acquisition has any effect.
It is hard to say what this means at this stage...
IBM develops products that it acquires based on where IBM needs the product to go. Sometimes that matches where the user community wants it to go, sometimes it does not. But they will put resources behind it, and it will change - we just need to give it time to see what direction that change takes things.
Just a question -might be dumb- is the merger of io.js and node.js which happened a couple of months ago related to this news in anyway? Anyways IMHO this good news and I hope it will make node.js much better, who knows maybe replace V8 with something even better.
Acquisitions are thoroughly NDA'd. A few of the core team may have been told (but relationships are not universally cordial - recall that Strongloop and Nodesource are direct competitors). The io.js community in general was absolutely not told.
I expect there are a few people who feel a bit betrayed that one of the major movers in a supposed grass-roots community-oriented fork appears to have done it only to make themselves a better acquisition target.
While they're not wrong to feel that way, StrongLoop have been telegraphing this particular intention for a long time (at least since hiring Roth).
What node.js needs is a better way to manage packages. Right now, upgrading can fail with no way to roll back. Also, reproducibility is missing. E.g, it is not easy to download sources, and deploy those exact same sources on different machines.
I imagine it doesn't mean much beyond some more b2b uses of Node. Node has its own independent governance and nothing about this acquisition changes that.
This has some awesome implications for open source. If a huge company like IBM openly supports and dedicates resources to FOSS, I think we can expect these products to get way more attention and receive the full treatment of corporate testing and development which would really offset the ephemeral nature of projects like Node. Not saying the current foundation guys aren't doing a great job already, but IBM's expertise in software can only be a plus I think!
IBM has been an open source supporter for a long time. Their first Linux kernel contributions came no later than '99 (when they started upstreaming changes to support Linux on their mainframes, available since 2000).
IBM has long embraced the OSS community (I loved LTC), but the process to release/use anything OSS was not good (to put it nicely) and was one of the many reasons I left.
I worked on a project that was on an island, and while it was more efficient than normal IBM dev, it was still 10x slower and tons of red tape then what was required to make a competitive product (and stay competitive). IBM is big and ultimately has to protect themselves - IMO ultimately it gets in your way of making a good/competitive product.
I like what StrongLoop does for the node community, and I do indeed hope you are successful and nothing changes. But to be honest I am very skeptical.