IBM Has Almost Obliterated or Killed the Entire Fedora Community (Not IBM Staff)
Remaining Fedora insiders are well aware of this, but bringing this up (an "accusation" against IBM) might be a CoC violation (or sackable offence for IBM insiders)
IBM is a very old (and arrogant/sinister) company which nowadays behaves like a patent troll in pursuit of easy cash. It used to employ some very clever people, but today's management drove those away and the current leadership does not understand Free software. Consider how foolishly they thought that by culling CentOS as a "proper" clone of RHEL they'd force people to move (and pay for) RHEL. That didn't work. Now there are many CentOS-like clones, and unlike CentOS IBM does not control these. So what was actually accomplished?
Earlier this month we wrote that "IBM's Latest Fedora Divestment Speaks for Itself". We explained that Fedora volunteers saw the writings on the wall, if not in earlier years (after IBM's takeover of Red Hat), then perhaps in summer of 2023.
A couple of days ago we discovered that there were "Only 166 Voters in Fedora Elections Under IBM" and, as LWN put it: "One seat was open on the Mindshare Committee and that went to Luis Bazan as the only eligible candidate nominated in this period."
That looks pathetic, but it's even more pathetic when one considers the PR decoy of Fedora. They keep hiding behind "DEI" to project this idea that they're for social justice, but this is their entire (official channel/room) activity for the month of December:
It's virtually if not almost practically dead. Nobody even responded to that "happy birthday" thing.
Today's leaders (executives and board members of IBM) probably cannot understand the importance of Fedora and therefore cannot understand why their actions harm Red Hat as an acquisition. They might learn over time, but they'll never admit their mistakes. This current thread says a lot about the sentiments towards IBM management, even inside IBM. Conceited, greedy, unprincipled. █