Red Hat is in Need of a 'Jolla', as an IBM-Controlled Red Hat is Becoming Like the Microsoft-Infiltrated Nokia
Dying fast, partly by design
Red Hat was established in the 1990s by a businessman in a hat (wearing a red hat, literally). As Thomas Grzybowski put it 6 years ago: "A friend of mine was attending one of the OLF Conferences, on Saturday November 7th, and he happened to find a seat listening to Bob Young of Red Hat. Young was telling a story about how a few years ago he had explained to Richard Stallman that he himself was more committed to Free Software than Stallman was. In his view, Stallman was only ideologically supporting Free Software, while Red Hat’s entire business model depended upon on it. And through Red Hat’s commercialization of GNU/Linux, Young had brought open-source/free software into wide-spread corporate acceptance and into the marketplace such that many more people could benefit."
Years have passed, GNU/Linux is very widely used on servers, and even on desktops and laptops a lot of progress has been made lately.
However, Bob Young left Red Hat behind a very long time ago (he cared deeply about it; the CEOs who came later only cared about their own money) and it has passed between hands several times. Now a dying IBM controls Bob Young's "baby" and staff receives messages insinuating that there's not much time left. Some recent comments say budget cuts (by Wright) will come next, resulting in profound and disappointing changes. It starts in October.
Earlier this year a reader told me: "I used to work at Georgia Tech's Open Source Program Office last year, where I was accepted into their joint program with IBM. That experience is one I'll never forget, as I learned first hand how IBM operates internally; and it hurt, as RedHat was my dream job/company growing up."
Dreams shattered.
From what we have heard from whistleblowers (Red Hat staff), they hate IBM, they say IBM is ruining the company (including its culture), many want out, and some already leave or are kicked out silently (they cannot say what they really think or feel).
What's needed for RHEL to go on and become free again is the sort of thing two much smaller companies did (one led by the original CentOS creator).
It's difficult to forget what Microsoft did to Nokia. Microsoft and its footsoldiers (including the very nasty man who pretends to know security) want us to forget.
Free software can survive as long as the source code is free. IBM tries to get in the way. IBM wants many of the same things Microsoft wants. █