They say 24 hours is a long time in politics but maybe it applies to the technology sector too! Between the last time we published the editorial and now Red Hat has agreed to be acquired by IBM. As the public statements from IBM and Red Hat discuss, the deal won’t officially close until the second half of 2019 and until that happens both companies must remain operating as independent entities. There have also been strong statements from both sides that Red Hat will be a separate entity within IBM in order to preserve the benefits of acquiring such a leader in the open source space. At this stage though there are very few details that I or others can share publicly. However, and I’ve written about this in my personal blog, I feel quietly confident that this acquisition (more like a semi-merger) will be good for Red Hat, our communities and our customers, as well as IBM.