Bonum Certa Men Certa

IBM is Leaving Money on the Table by Paying Massive Salaries to Its CEO While Culling Workers and Neglecting GNU/Linux

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Apr 03, 2024

Outdoor pool table

They just want RHEL and stuff like OpenShift+, but in reality they seek another 'UNIX monopoly' (or monoculture [1, 2, 3] with stuff like Ansible and Podman) instead of community-developed systems; to make matters worse, they try to help Microsoft with "clown computing", set aside decommodification, because the goal is not freedom. The goal is control and habitual 'upgrades'.

IBM CEO pay jumps 23% in 2023, average employee gets 7%

THE earlier effort to gather additional information about rumours of impending Red Hat layoffs (like in April 2023) resulted in some circumstantial evidence that isn't mere rumours.

Let's face it; GNU/Linux is growing, based on all the major surveys, like we pointed out on Tuesday. In fact, statCounter shows GNU/Linux + ChromeOS (combined) at close to 7% in Germany, close to 5% in France, close to 15% in Sweden, and close to 20% in Norway this month. These people are willing to pay for GNU/Linux and can afford it. There is a lot of money to be made by companies like IBM.

On the server side, GNU/Linux has long been dominant (UNIX and BSDs don't come near; Windows is becoming extinct), but IBM does not have suitable ideology. Unlike its previous leadership, the current one does not understand the platform and does not even use it.

A week ago Liam Proven wrote:

Some techies expressed concern to us because they interpret talk of improving productivity as potentially cutting jobs, as when Red Hat's parent company IBM hired world number three consultancy Bain in 2018, just under two years before it spun off its services division, a year later renamed to Kyndryl.

We are not suggesting Red Hat is anything but loved by IBM, and OpenShift is the basis for Big Blue's hybrid cloud. Nevertheless, some are a little worried.

If Red Hat (IBM) does not pursue GNU/Linux as a desktop (client) platform, and there are suggestions that they may move from GNOME to KDE as the default desktop environment*, there are plenty of community-run (managed, driven etc.) distros ready to fill the gap.

People are tired of Windows, Vista 11 is evidently failing (appalling news for Intel), and at the moment GNU/Linux is the most viable alternative for most people, so Microsoft wants it morbidly associated with 'safety' problems.

_____________

+ OpenShift and other Red Hat "products" are a bit like openwashing. They take commonly used packages like container stuff, "enhance" them", FUD the originals ("difficult", "unsupported"), then rebrand and sell their own "version". Canonical does this too.

* Several people brought this up in IRC today and yesterday. "Looks like some higher ups at Redhat and the Fedora Project are proposing that KDE be the default desktop," arkanian said a few hours ago. We examined the links. Remember that Fedora and Red Hat basically abandoned KDE (formally) when nobody noticed after IBM had taken over. Is there remorse now?

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

A Week After a Worldwide Windows Outage Microsoft is 'Bricking' Windows All On Its Own, Cannot Blame Others Anymore
A look back at a week of lousy press coverage, Microsoft deceit, and lessons to be learned
 
Links 26/07/2024: Hamburgerization of Sushi and GNU/Linux Primer
Links for the day
Links 26/07/2024: Tesco Cutbacks and Fake Patent Courts
Links for the day
Links 26/07/2024: Grimy Residue of the 'AI' Bubble and Tensions Around Alaska
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/07/2024: More Computers and Tilde Hosting
Links for the day
Links 26/07/2024: "AI" Hype Debunked and Elon Musk's "X" Already Spreads Political Disinformation
Links for the day
"Why you boss is insatiably horny for firing you and replacing you with software."
Ask McDonalds how this "AI" nonsense with IBM worked out for them
No Olympics
We really need to focus on real news
Nobody Holds the GNOME Foundation Accountable (Not Even IRS), It's Governed by Lawyers, Not Geeks, and Headed by a Shaman Crank
GNOME is a deeply oppressive institutions that eats its own
[Meme] The 'Modern' Web and 'Linux' Foundation Reinforcing Monopolies and Cementing centralisation
They don't care about the users and issuing a few bytes with random characters costs them next to nothing. It gives them control over billions of human beings.
'Boiling the Frog' or How Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) is Being Abandoned at Short Notice by Let's Encrypt
This isn't a lack of foresight but planned obsolescence
When the LLM Bubble Implodes Completely Microsoft Will be 'Finished'
Excuses like, "it's not ready yet" or "we'll fix it" won't pass muster
"An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs"
The lesson of this story is, if you do evil things, bad things will come your way. So don't do evil things.
When Wikileaks Was Still Primarily a Wiki
less than 14 years ago the international media based its war journalism on what Wikileaks had published
The Free Software Foundation Speaks Out Against Microsoft
the problem is bigger than Microsoft and in the long run - seeing Microsoft's demise - we'll need to emphasise Software Freedom
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 25, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, July 25, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Links 26/07/2024: E-mail on OpenBSD and Emacs Fun
Links for the day
Links 25/07/2024: Talks of Increased Pension Age and Biden Explains Dropping Out
Links for the day
Links 25/07/2024: Paul Watson, Kernel Bug, and Taskwarrior
Links for the day
[Meme] Microsoft's "Dinobabies" Not Amused
a slur that comes from Microsoft's friends at IBM
Flashback: Microsoft Enslaves Black People (Modern Slavery) for Profit, or Even for Losses (Still Sinking in Debt Due to LLMs' Failure)
"Paid Kenyan Workers Less Than $2 Per Hour"
From Lion to Lamb: Microsoft Fell From 100% to 13% in Somalia (Lowest Since 2017)
If even one media outlet told you in 2010 that Microsoft would fall from 100% (of Web requests) to about 1 in 8 Web requests, you'd probably struggle to believe it
Microsoft Windows Became Rare in Antarctica
Antarctica's Web stats still near 0% for Windows
Links 25/07/2024: YouTube's Financial Problem (Even After Mass Layoffs), Journalists Bemoan Bogus YouTube Takedown Demands
Links for the day
Gemini Now 70 Capsules Short of 4,000 and Let's Encrypt Sinks Below 100 (Capsules) as Self-Signed Leaps to 91%
The "gopher with encryption" protocol is getting more widely used and more independent from GAFAM
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 24, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 24, 2024
Techrights Statement on YouTube
YouTube is a dying platform
[Video] Julian Assange on the Right to Know
Publishing facts is spun as "espionage" by the US government and "treason" by the Russian government, to give two notable examples
Links 25/07/2024: Tesla's 45% Profit Drop, Humble Games Employees All Laid Off
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/07/2024: Losing Grip and collapseOS
Links for the day