There is so much business software out there and ecosystems that have evolved around it. Systems still running cobol on IBM mainframes; or, more "modern" stacks like Java apps running in IBM websphere. There are relatively small numbers of HN reading folk that went to some of the best CS programs and/or work(ed) at FANG caliber companies (whatever you call them now). The rest of the software engineer types are a diverse crowd and turning to IBM Bob might be more natural than some creepy looking orange starfish offering. That's my hypothesis anyway.

And the solution to those businesses is not more IBM software, but Claude Code converting it to Go/Rust/Typescript in a few weeks.

A lot of IBM customers have moved to RH Openshift and running their java there.