[rumcajz]

The article argues that Red Hat's business model was selling a "slightly better version of Linux".

IMO they were rather in the business of being a professional scapegoat. Someone to blame when that scary open source thing goes wrong.

[organsnyder]

That's how they were used at my last employer. Yes, their OpenShift platform is very good, and they have a lot of good products in their ecosystem, but the biggest value they provided was a vendor to blame if things went south.

Maybe Red Hat and IBM aren't as different as we like to think.

[freehunter]

Exactly. The best reason to hire IBM is so you have a company who is big enough to sue when something goes wrong.

[raverbashing]

Funnily enough, nobody sues IBM when their product is an obscenely expensive barely functional mount of manure

Even more funny, those who propose the acquisitions of said tools are not held responsible when things go south for their complete inadequacy for their job.

[dragandj]

And even more funny would be to find someone who has enough power to sue IBM, which probably has more lawyers in its legal department than the plaintiff has total employees.

[organsnyder]

"No one ever got fired for buying IBM."

[Angostura]

See also "a single throat to choke"

[setquk]

I never understood that mentality.

Not once have I had an insurmountable problem with any Linux platform.

The same is not true with Microsoft, Oracle and IBM from experience, even with paid up top tier support. Even 60,000 employee defence companies have no real power. I've seen someone forced to throw a registry fix out to 5000 desktops (over hundreds of disparate sites) because MSFT wouldn't fix a fucking bug.

[mixmastamyk]

I like to think of it as liability insurance.

[phendrenad2]

> Buy Red Hat

> Something goes wrong

> Blame Red Hat

> Keep your job

Sounds about right.