We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13624340 and marked it off-topic.

It's actually not derogatory: "A dark horse is a little-known person or thing that emerges to prominence, especially in a competition of some sort, or a contestant that seems unlikely to succeed."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_horse

"Dark horse" isn't a slur or pejorative in general. It's roughly equivalent to "long shot" or "underdog" or something like that.

Per wikipedia: "A dark horse is a little-known person or thing that emerges to prominence, especially in a competition of some sort, or a contestant that seems unlikely to succeed."

In this case I would imagine it's because Red Hat is pretty tiny compared to IBM/Google/Oracle and could not put up a comparable amount of money for the purchase.

Dark Horse is the horse in the race nobody thinks has a chance of winning, but comes out near the front in the final seconds (surprising everybody). You could've just Googled it.

my goodness, this is probably not a native English speaker, or perhaps never heard the expression before... why be so harsh?

Not understanding is fine: assuming that something one doesn't understand must be a slur is not fine.

He didn't assume but presume. And I think that's quite understandable for a non native speaker, given the connotation of the word 'dark'.

Actually in this case presuming is not understandable, there is no evidence or reasonable grounds to support his statement.

We are on the internet, and online dictionaries exist. There is no reason to presume or assume the meaning of a word when it can merely be looked up.

Dark horse in this context means other companies unlikely to actually buy it, or win the bidding war. Its not any sort of slur that I'm aware of.

dark horse just means not a main favored candidate

Personal attacks are not allowed on HN.

We've warned you about rudeness on HN in the past. Since you don't seem to have done it in a while, we won't ban you, but please remember that it's not ok and don't post like this again.