Fedora Program Manager Laid Off As Part Of Red Hat Cuts

[doublez13]

Jim Salter (formerly of ArsTechnica-shitting-on-btrfs) on Friday's episode of the podcast 2.5admins was saying that Redhat is about to be a lot less about open-source. He couldn't elaborate and said we'd have to wait to find out more. Loosening or cutting the tries to Fedora might just be the tip.

I was also wondering if this is what he was referring to, or if there's more to come.
It's such a shame to see IBM pull RH down with it as it sinks.

I wouldn't be surprised if we find out more next week with RH Summit.

[skeevy420]

The crisis is here, it's just that very few want to admit..

Everyone seems to be cutting costs and firing ppl. The company that I work for, is in a process of closing all operation in my country. Everyone will lose their jobs by the end of 2023. I was lucky enough to be in a key role that needs to make some handovers.. otherwise my contract would have ended at the end of fiscal year (June).

..

I don't want to go this off-topic, but this is a self-made crisis. You can't have infinite short-term quarterly gains with finite resources, a finite monetary supply, and a finite labor supply. They've bled the lower and middle classes dry so they only way to keep the numbers on the charts going up to please the bosses is to fire employees. They've already cut fringe benefits so all that's left is labor...and why they're bringing back child labor -- child labor is paid less.

A lot of these companies aren't firing people to reduce numbers. Every role that was just let go will be filled again, only the person coming in will be paid less than the person before. Since most people won't take a pay cut, they fire everyone (gotta love Right to Work) and wait for them to be desperate enough to take the same job at less pay. They have trillions and trillions sitting in banks that haven't seen the light of day since the 1800s. They have long-game waiting money. Companies like IBM do things like fire exactly 499 people a week because you have to have legitimate reasons for 500+ firings.

This is the 2nd coming of 1800s hyper-capitalism where practically everything is ran by a handful of corporations that don't pay well so the country gets so downtrodden and depressed that child labor seems like an acceptable alternative to starving to death and being homeless. That century is why we have all these rules and regulations that they're trying to dismantle.

[OneTimeShot]

...and this is why I was worried about IBM buying RedHat...

IBM is not interested in developing a FOSS eco-system. Never was, never will be. They just want to control the biggest server OS provider. When RedHat goes wrong, they'll just buy whoever replaces them.

[Vistaus]

I don't want to go this off-topic, but this is a self-made crisis. You can't have infinite short-term quarterly gains with finite resources, a finite monetary supply, and a finite labor supply. They've bled the lower and middle classes dry so they only way to keep the numbers on the charts going up to please the bosses is to fire employees. They've already cut fringe benefits so all that's left is labor...and why they're bringing back child labor -- child labor is paid less.

A lot of these companies aren't firing people to reduce numbers. Every role that was just let go will be filled again, only the person coming in will be paid less than the person before. Since most people won't take a pay cut, they fire everyone (gotta love Right to Work) and wait for them to be desperate enough to take the same job at less pay. They have trillions and trillions sitting in banks that haven't seen the light of day since the 1800s. They have long-game waiting money. Companies like IBM do things like fire exactly 499 people a week because you have to have legitimate reasons for 500+ firings.

This is the 2nd coming of 1800s hyper-capitalism where practically everything is ran by a handful of corporations that don't pay well so the country gets so downtrodden and depressed that child labor seems like an acceptable alternative to starving to death and being homeless. That century is why we have all these rules and regulations that they're trying to dismantle.

I wonder if they fired him with or without asking to take pay-cut. If I was making good money and loved my job, I wouldn't mind taking a pay-cut. But if they don't ask me, they'll never know.

[DeepDayze]

...and this is why I was worried about IBM buying RedHat...

IBM is not interested in developing a FOSS eco-system. Never was, never will be. They just want to control the biggest server OS provider. When RedHat goes wrong, they'll just buy whoever replaces them.

IBM as a company seems to have lost direction, and thus picking up whatever new shiny thing that comes along. Now they embraced the cloud like they embraced the PC...

[abott]

I worked at Lowe's when IBM released their "Lowe's Custom" but also "IBM Generic" future-of-POS-checkout system. That shit was shipped straight in from India, and it was EASILY the worst software I ever saw. It sucked so hard, it took upwards of 5 minutes to process a semi-standard transaction with a customer waiting in front of you. Would allocate products who-the-hell-knows where, and then also just straight up was the most horrible thing I ever saw. That showed me that IBM can't write even basic-ass software. They're gonna be the next oracle unless they figure out how to. And not in the "provide legacy only support for tens of billions" oracle, either.

[mangeek]

The crisis is here, it's just that very few want to admit..

Everyone seems to be cutting costs and firing ppl.

..

There's a lot going on, but the sky isn't falling for everyone. There's still an overall labor shortage in the USA, and it appears that the firms and business units with the most layoffs were probably mostly ones that weren't directly profitable. The landscape changes when interest rates are higher, investors need to see 10-20% return on investment in two or three years to compete favorably with 'sticking your money in the bank and getting 5% no-risk returns'. In a lot of ways, this is a 'return to normal', it's been really weird to see people grow up and build careers in business ecosystems that don't make profit on the bottom line; that was pretty 'new', dating back to the dotcom era, and it's a symptom of 'cheap money'.

[MeowDib]

I'll never understand the "Red Hat Sucks, Use Alma or Rocky" mentality. It makes no sense*. emansom, if RHEL is steering into an iceberg, how is Rocky Linux not doing the same?

However, not liking RHEL for technical or managerial reasons while promoting Rocky or Alma is like saying the Ku Klux Klan is bad so you join the clone organization Cu Clux Clan that does everything identically to the bad organization, only they have a different name so that makes them somehow better. Following the NAZI's is supposed to be bad, but following those that 1:1 imitate the NAZIs is somehow OK? I don't get that.

Exactly.

If RHEL fails, whose homework are they going to copy from?

[sophisticles]

It sucks getting laid off, I was let go in March of this year from a management position where I busted my ass, so i know how it feels.

Having said that, I have long felt that Fedora should never have existed in the first place and frankly have hoped that it would go the way of the dodo.

I remember back in the early 2000's when Fedora was first announced, I read an article where the author made what has turned out to be a prescient statement, to wit, that he hoped Fedora was not meant to be a perpetually beta Red Hat variant.

Over the years that's exactly how Fedora has felt, despite the Fedora faithfuls' protestations of how great it is.

The sad thing is that back before Fedora, Red Hat was my favorite distro when coupled with Ximian Gnome, and over the years i felt some of the Red Hat variants like Scientific Linux where much better than Fedora.

For me, Korora was Fedora done right.

The ridiculous ideology that shapes Fedora decisions really needs to end.

[Xunjin]

I would like to know that too. I wonder how they have chosen him over the staff at diversity-equity-inclusion. He seems to have been giving value to the software.

I wonder which mental gymnastics you did to relate a layoff of such important person for the Fedora Project with affirmative actions to deal with inequalities. How can you mix both?! Have you been hurt by this, do you need any therapy?

I also wonder for how long Michael will allow this kinda of behavior in his own platform. Am I the only one who see this as disgunting attack to minorities?