I'd expect IBM, of all "big companies," to be one of the least concerned about an acquisition using GPL software. They do so much work with GPL software, I'm sure they have very well defined internal policies on making sure they're in compliance. IBM is number 7 by measure of changesets (http://lwn.net/Articles/460597/) in the 3.1 Linux kernel.
Heck, my company (approx 150k employees) isn't what I'd consider a good contributor to open source software but even we have internal policies defining how we need to comply with GPL and other open source licenses. There's lawyers internally that specifically work with open source compliance.
As long as you have your act together and can show that you're compliant with all licenses (open or closed), I can't see why it would be a major barrier to a legit buyout offer.
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I'd expect IBM, of all "big companies," to be one of the least concerned about an acquisition using GPL software. They do so much work with GPL software, I'm sure they have very well defined internal policies on making sure they're in compliance. IBM is number 7 by measure of changesets (http://lwn.net/Articles/460597/) in the 3.1 Linux kernel.
Heck, my company (approx 150k employees) isn't what I'd consider a good contributor to open source software but even we have internal policies defining how we need to comply with GPL and other open source licenses. There's lawyers internally that specifically work with open source compliance.
As long as you have your act together and can show that you're compliant with all licenses (open or closed), I can't see why it would be a major barrier to a legit buyout offer.