IBM sells Red Hat shares
IBM's decision to sell off a bulk of its shares in Red Hat has prompted speculation that it is attempting to weaken its links with the Linux distributor.
Big Blue filed with regulators this week to sell about $14.37m worth of shares in Red Hat. The 250,000 shares were acquired through a private purchase from Red Hat about 13 months ago, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission made available yesterday.
IBM sold another 150,000 shares earlier this month worth an estimated $8.5m.
Andrew Butler, research director at Gartner, said that the sell off does not necessarily signal a softening in Big Blue's Linux commitment, but that "hardware vendors do not want to be seen as too Red Hat specific. It is in their interests to be as friendly to other distributors like Caldera, which is growing in strength and has a sound business plan."
He said that historically they have favoured Red Hat as the primary Linux as it had great early success in positioning itself as an application service platform: "A few months ago Red Hat was doing the best job of proclaiming its value add, but other distributors' credibility is growing."
Adam Jollans, UK marketing manager for Linux at....