The Chaos Theory

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2021-05-09 12:13:03 UTC
Modified: 2021-05-09 12:18:48 UTC

CentOS users rushing to Rocky/Alma
Keep users running around in a panic until they settle on IBM subscriptions?

Summary: Making GNU/Linux less stable and less predictable isn't good for GNU/Linux users; but it certainly helps sell Red Hat support contracts and vexation inside the community weakens Red Hat's competitors

IN the context of mathematics, what we're dealing with is a high level of uncertainty or lack of predictability (animation shown to the right, having been 'stolen' from Wikipedia). IBM pioneered the FUD tactics, then to be adopted by Microsoft, the "love child" of IBM. They're still not done, they just make slight adaptations/refinements as their FUD tactics evolve somewhat... they're readjusting as they rally a mob of misled people.

Double compound pendulum Earlier this year (just before the cancel mob had a go at RMS yet again) we explained what IBM was doing to community-led distributions. Distro developers reach out and tell us about it. This morning I spoke to one distro developer who said "some have retracted their signature from the RMS open letter due to their revision of it [and] I am considering doing so as well..." (it has not been updated in 12 days now; last update 12 days ago).

"I used to love what IBM did for us, especially back in the days of the OOXML/ODF battles."As we explained numerous times before, IBM (et al) sought to destabilise the Free software community and it sort of backfired in a major way. Instead it destabilised IBM, which sees Red Hat engineers fleeing (IBM is anxious about people pointing that out). The brand of IBM is losing lustre. Developers no longer feel comfortable about Red Hat stuff, either. As one developer told us, regarding the Linux Foundation (LF) in particular: "IBM mostly gives money to LF so that they can try to buy their projects into LF initiatives [...] IBM shows up and tries to cram their [expletive] and it gets rebuffed because nobody wants it [...] so really, IBM is spending money and still losing [...] IBM ruining GNU/Linux with systemd and other [expletive] being a big one..."

I used to love what IBM did for us, especially back in the days of the OOXML/ODF battles. But the tide is turning when IBM starts laying off GNU/Linux developers and attacking/defaming the founder of the operating system. IBM isn't in good hands anymore (Palmisano was the end of that rosy era) and Red Hat is flailing by driving away its largest userbase (CentOS) or community of volunteers/contributors (Fedora). Who will be left to package stuff and report bugs? ⬆

Move fast and break things; systemd release every 8 weeks
Hurry up and break things

"systemd is essentially a corporate IBM/Redhat project and corporations of course will comply": Microsoft and IBM care about users' freedom like Cheeto Lump cares about the US Constitution
Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Digital Identity Bifurcation and a "Return to Gemini": Links for the day
Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Depictions of Culture and The Social Smolnet: Links for the day
SimilarWeb Was Never a Reliable Yardstick for Traffic: 5RB may need some "house-cleaning"
Strangulation, suffocation, Jonathan Carter & Debian toxic culture confirmed: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Reports or Hearsay Suggest Ogilvy Broke Up With IBM and Insiders Report Mass Layoffs in "Infrastructure" (Might Impact Red Hat Entrants): hearsay in Social Control Media
Scheduled Server Maintenance Tomorrow Night: Starting 9PM
None of the Above (NotA) & Debian snubbing Sruthi Chandran: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 20/03/2026: Cryptography Pioneers Win Turing Award and BMG Sues Anthropic for Copyright Infringement: Links for the day
Even Uganda Understands That Journalists Never Belong in Prison: "Ugandan authorities must respect the spirit of this ruling and abandon any measures that seek to jail Ugandans for the free flow of ideas."
Inaction Helps Your Enemies: Without freedom, there's nothing else left
Windows Down From 99% to ~50% in Republic of Seychelles (République des Seychelles): Windows fell by a lot
Confluent Insiders: IBM Laid Over Over 800 at Confluent, Not Just 800: For the record, the layoffs at Confluent won't be over. After the bluewashing there will be "IBM RAs" impacting Confluent folks, aside from PIPs
The Layoffs at IBM Carry on (Shades of Enron): Is IBM another Enron?
"IBM boss Arvind Krishna... financial package valued at $38 million in calendar 2025 - equivalent to the average collective pay of 765 Big Blue workers.": continues to ruin the company to enrich himself while pretending he has a strategy
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 19, 2026: IRC logs for Thursday, March 19, 2026
SLAPP Censorship - Part 16 Out of 200: Detailing the Actors and Explaining Techrights' Own Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Network: For those who have not followed our story
Microsoft "hiding behind bigger news of war, Epstein, other companies' layoffs": They know what's coming, they just don't know when
Joerg Jaspert (Debian Account Manager/DAM) personally approved Raphael Hertzog's wife Sophie Brun: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Letter 'A' prohibited by Code of Conduct extremism: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Spoiler: Diversity & Debian means different things to different people: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Admits Failures and Criticism of Inaction on SLAPPs: many if not all solicitors and solicitor firms in the UK are in effect unregulated
Archiving or Preserving Pages About IBM Layoffs: Layoffs at IBM and the media does not talk about these
ABC, the American National Broadcaster, "Now Publishes Slop": If the "big media" absorbs slop, it'll no longer be trusted and therefore not read/watched by the public
Links 19/03/2026: Culling Deepfakes of Artists’ Music and "Age Verification Isn’t the Answer": Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/03/2026: "Aktion GPT-4" and "Kill All Descendants": Links for the day
"AI" 15 Times in Short 'Article' From The Register MS. And The Register MS Got Paid to Publish It.: gets paid to do this
People Who Decided to Boycott Novell Over Its Microsoft Alliance Should Also Boycott Canonical: As an associate put it, "selling out further, due to Microsoft moles inside Canonical"
Links 19/03/2026: "AI Glasses" as Euphemism for Mass Surveillance and ABC (US) Has Begun Publishing Slop as 'News': Links for the day
The European Patent Office, Europe's Second-Largest Institution, is on Strike Today: Lots more to come
What People Impacted by the Bluewashing Layoffs at IBM Confluent Say (While the Media Says Nothing at All, in Effect Burying the News): Worse yet, the mainstream media spreads lies about it right now
IBM Has Turned Red Hat and Fedora Into Slop: This is IBM policy
IBM is Being Robbed, Companies and Jobs Are Destroyed: Companies taken over by IBM will be exploited and destroyed to keep a bubble inflated for a little while longer
In Confluent Layoffs, IBM Vapourises a Quarter of Its Workforce (IBM Buys Something That It Destroys Already): In the past, such things were typically referred to as "media blackout"; now it's just "the norm".
IBM Effect at Confluent: Mass Layoffs and IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines (BCGs) Said to be Violated: For Confluent employees who survived the layoffs there will be "culture chock"
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 18, 2026: IRC logs for Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Links 19/03/2026: LLM Fatigue (It Doesn't Work as Advertised), "Small Web Feeds": Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 15 Out of 200: Background and Particulars of Truth Regarding Techrights and Tux Machines: the basic facts (this has aged well, except the times/ages/numbers)
A Slopfarms Survey for Today (linuxteck.com, linuxsecurity.com, linuxjournal.com): Not only did Google news link to a slopfarm; it linked to three run by the same team!
Links 18/03/2026: "Venture Capitalist Warns That It’s All About to Come Crashing Down" Due to Slop Bubble, "Birdwatching for Fun and no Profit": Links for the day
IBM Red Hat is Still Promoting Restricted Boot Which Restricts Users' Control Over Their Computers: Red Hat under IBM is a total catastrophe
Arvind Says... Something Something "Hey Hi" (the State of Today's Media): Look for news about IBM and most likely it'll boil down to some sound bites from an executive and nothing else
New Post Has Just Explained How IBM Gets Robbed by the People Who Fail IBM: Their plan for IBM is a personal plan
Slop-Spewing GAFAM LLM That Knows Nothing and Understands Nothing, It's a Stochastic Parrot That Cannot Even Figure Out Tux Machines is a Community That Started in Tennessee 22 Years Ago: RMS rightly calls those things "bullshit generators"
Cusdeb Makes New Presentation About Where GNU Hurd (Still a Possible Linux Replacement) Stands in 2026: coming from a generally RMS-friendly account
Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Librarians, Phone Anxiety, Growing 'Small' Net, and Slop Versus Software Engineering: Links for the day
Estimates That IBM to Lay Off Close to 10,000 Workers in 2026 (Not Counting People Pushed Out): There's still chatter about Confluent mass layoffs
Smug Threat by Garrett to Put My Family and I in Prison Doesn't Prove We Did Anything Wrong, It Only Proves He's Truly Desperate to Stop Further Publications That Embarrass Him: his reputation is poor in the United States
systemd Increasingly Microsoft Project, Controlled by Microsoft and Slopware: Cannot allow choice
What IBM Meant to Red Hat: "Proprietary Bundling, Restricted Source Access": Anyone or anything that joins IBM likely shortens its lifespan
IBM Thrashing Confluent Upon Arrival, Based on Rumours: We deem it a bigger issue that investigative journalism perished, not that one must rely on hearsay online or mere "rumours"
Slop Is Plagiarism, Not (Vibe) Coding, and It's Not Automated, It Doesn't Save Money: Reject misnomers, explain what's actually happening
UPC is Still Illegal and Unconstitutional (Kangaroo Court for Patents, Manned by Corporate Staff), Federal Court of Justice of Germany Receives Belated Complaint About It: What is happening to Europe???
EPO Demonstration Happening Right Now, Later This Week Things Will Only Escalate Further: The SUEPO The Hague Committee wrote to staff this morning
Sophie Brun, Raphael Hertzog & Debian sexual conflicts of interest: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2026: Commodore's Hedley Davis Dies, Apple Not Good Enough, Cheeto "Floats Treason Charges for Iran War Coverage": Links for the day
A Step Close to Shutting Down the European Patent Office (EPO): Not going to work all month long
EPO Staff Demonstration Today: The demonstration will be live-streamed for those thousands of colleagues who don't live in Munich
Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Brazilian SYN Attacks and BGP: Links for the day
LibreLocal Also Coming to Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, and Spain: It helps raise awareness of Software Freedom
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 17, 2026: IRC logs for Tuesday, March 17, 2026

The Chaos Theory

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