The extent of debate and acrimony that broke out within the project last year over the decision to adopt systemd as the default init system for the next release, Jessie, would have taxed the patience of even the most suave diplomat.

Yet Nussbaum (seen above addressing the annual Debconf last year) has come through the whole thing unscathed and, as he gets set to vacate the post -- the new leader, to be elected over the first fortnight of April, will take over on April 17 -- can even see some positives in the whole process.

IBM (NYSE:IBM) and Red Hat (NYSE:RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source cloud software, announced today that the companies have reached a definitive agreement under which IBM will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat for $190.00 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise value of approximately $34 billion.