Fedora Has Changed a Lot Since I Last Used It (IBM Dominates Almost Everything, IBM Agenda Displaces Community Goals)
IBM's stock is in shambles again (intentionally lying to shareholders by presenting vapourware is not a a sustainable strategy). IBM's management is all about buzzwords and hype these days. Tall on promises, short on delivery.
What about Fedora, long considered a testing incubator for RHEL (with unpaid volunteers)?
Two days ago we said about Fedora:
It's like Canonical with Ubuntu, only worse
In Canonical's case, many of the bad decisions are made by a former spy (appointed by a company of GAFAM boosters). In IBM's case, Fedora is run by a lot of IBM workers, who in order to protect their salaries at times of volatility ("silent layoffs") would blindly go along with IBM interests and never rock the boat like some of their former colleagues did (IBM fired them). The man who was forced to resort to alarmism is now forced to use slop instead of code; he publicly complains about it, but he says he must use slop because of income (losing the job at IBM would devastate him and his family). This is what happens when nontechnical buzzword lovers take control.
"Info regarding Red Hat's influence over Fedora Council and FESCo" was sent to us by a reader, whom we'll keep anonymous to avoid reprisal (we've verified authenticity). "I've been following Techrights," said this reader, "and I agree with the sad state of Fedora being a community-governed and led project."
It turns out to be even worse than we thought. "One thing I noticed when reading the article and would like to clarify: Kevin Fenzi (nirik), the one person that effectively keeps Fedora's lights on, is employed by Red Hat as Fedora Infrastructure Lead on the CPE team (at least according to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Kevin)."
"I don't know how you treat the distinction between Red Hat and IBM," we got told, "but Kevin is definitely not a community volunteer but a paid staff member."
"Thank you for the very useful information," I replied. "I had suspicions that Kevin had been recruited; many, in my experience, are volunteers of Red Hat (now IBM) in hope that it can lead to a job offer, inside the company or among ISVs some time down the road."
"Regarding FESCo," we got told, "after the recently held Fedora 44 elections, the number of non-Red Hat employed representatives actually increased."
"FESCo representation is now 5 non-Red Hat employed vs. 4 Red Hat employed representatives:
- Kevin Fenzi (nirik) — Fedora Infrastructure Lead, in Red Hat's CPE (Community Platform Engineering) group.
- Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek (zbyszek) — Amutable since Jan 2026. Formerly Red Hat.
- Timothée Ravier (siosm) — CoreOS team at Red Hat.
- Máirín Duffy (duffy) — Senior Principal Interaction Designer at Red Hat.
- Neal Gompa (ngompa) — not Red Hat (openSUSE/AlmaLinux/Mageia; Datto/Kaseya employment history).
- Fabio Valentini (decathorpe) — freelance/independent, Innsbruck.
- Michel Lind (salimma) — Production Engineer on Meta's Linux Userspace team.
- Maxwell G (gotmax23) — no employer stated publicly and uses personal-domain emails rather than a corporate one, so whatever his day job is, there's no indication it's Red Hat.
- Simon de Vlieger (supakeen) — Image Builder team at Red Hat."
Well, Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek technically works for a Microsoft proxy now; perhaps he was impacted by the wave of bluewashing in January 2026 [1, 2] (there was another last July).
Several from the above are GAFAM, not IBM (Michel Lind for instance). So it still seems very imbalanced, US-oriented (with obligations to the dictatorship with respect to back doors etc), and nothing like the community I remember back when I was a Fedora user.
Speaking of obligations to the dictatorship, the (former) Red Hat staff that is responsible to Microsoft-controlled boot is now engaging in lawfare against me and my family. He is assisted by a fellow American who was arrested for strangling women while he was a Microsoft employee. Anything to distract from the upcoming calamity as certificates of Microsoft expire...
The 'Hulk Hogan of UEFI' could really use censorship right now [1, 2].
"The story with the Fedora Council is unfortunately, as you correctly point out in your articles, very different and worse," we got told. "It is effectively 100% run by Red Hat/IBM employed people... even when they are community-elected representatives." █