Bonum Certa Men Certa

2 Years After Microsoft Hijacked GitHub for Monopoly Fedora Still Has Well Over 100 Projects in Microsoft's GitHub (Not Even Counting Red Hat's and Systemd)

Fedora Infrastructure at GitHub



Summary: The Fedora project will fail to attract participants if it continues being some kind of hostage of Microsoft and proponent of vendor lock-in; we take a quick look at where this project stands today

THIS thing called "PLANET FEDORA" has been pretty much dead lately. Almost nothing there, except some Red Hat staff (one needs to be familiar with the names; affiliations undisclosed), a few postings in Arabic, status updates about everything being offline amid datacente migrations, and links to Microsoft's GitHub (to alert people about releases/updates). It wasn't like that a number of years ago. I know it wasn't as I followed it closely, every day, for a very long time.



Will volunteers be willing to work for free for IBM (through Fedora)? News reports say IBM plans to lay off thousands in 5 states, including North Carolina (NC) where Red Hat is based. A victim of IBM's takeovers once told me that based on his analysis every time IBM buys a company it waits two years before laying off people and canning projects/products. Two years he told me, naming half a dozen examples. The Red Hat takeover goes back to autumn of 2018.

"Will volunteers be willing to work for free for IBM (through Fedora)? News reports say IBM plans to lay off thousands in 5 states, including North Carolina (NC) where Red Hat is based."The GitHub issue quite frankly bothers me the most. They're supposed to compete with Microsoft and Windows. I have long examined and commented on it publicly. I really underestimated just to what degree Fedora had been 'outsourced' to Microsoft. Fedora Infrastructure alone has 124 repos in Microsoft's GitHub, IBM's and Red Hat's stuff not included (or even Systemd, which has its own dedicated account). What proportion of the code is now controlled, 'owned' and surveilled by Microsoft?

Less than a day ago Phoronix wrote about Red Hat and modularity. Systemd wasn't mentioned (it's an attack on modularity, it's vendor lock-in too). To quote Michael Larabel's polite post, "Red Hat continues to invest in the modularity concept for packaging and will be embracing it "where it most makes sense" for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9. [...] Fedora Modularity has been getting better, but it still has some criticism and open issues from both users and the developers/packagers. Red Hat though is continuing to invest in it and recently shifted the Modularity effort off to a new development team."

"Nice "Open Source" company you got there... with proprietary hosting and no vendor neutrality when it comes to core parts of the system (which became just systemd).""Modularity" is even capitalised now. See above. Have they trademarked it yet?

Aren't they being consciously cynical and ironic? Systemd eliminated compatibility with many things, reducing modularity like no other thing in GNU/Linux history. Moreover, to participate in Red Hat/Fedora as a developer (technical capacity) they nowadays expect people to set up an account with Microsoft.

Nice "Open Source" company you got there... with proprietary hosting and no vendor neutrality when it comes to core parts of the system (which became just systemd). Thanks for the laugh, Red Hat. Get better soon.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Free University of Bozen-Bolzano Proud to Host Free Software Talk by Richard Stallman
ahead of Monday's talk
Slopwatch: Anti-Linux Machine-Generated FUD (LLM Slop) From GBHackers, CybersecurityNews, and Guardian Digital, Inc (Google News Promotes Slop Plagiarism, Misinformation)
Companies that lie try to drown out the signal with falsehoods
 
Microsoft's Market Share in Cameroon Falls to New Lows
This means a lot of Android users (iOS is about 4 times smaller), but Android does not mean freedom
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 21, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, February 21, 2025
The Streisand Effect is Real
So don't be evil. Also, don't strangle women.
Links 21/02/2025: Linux Foundation Openwashing, Microsoft Copilot Goes Down
Links for the day
Links 21/02/2025: Doomscrolling and European Ham Radio Show
Links for the day
Links 21/02/2025: TikTok Layoffs, WebOS Software Patents in Bad Hands
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/02/2025: Web Browsers, Mechanical Shortcuts, and Internet Hygiene
Links for the day
Richard Stallman 'Only' Founded the FSF
there's no reason to be upset at the FSF for keeping their founder in the Board
Techrights Disconnected From the United States Two Years Ago
Did people really need to wait for the US government to become this hostile towards the media before recognising the threat?
Before Trying Censorship by Extortion the Serial Strangler From Microsoft Literally Begged Us to Delete Pages
This is very clearly just a broad campaign of intimidation
Hype Watch: Weeks After Microsoft Disappointed Investors With "Hey Hi" It's Trying Some "Quantum" Hype (Adding Impractical Vapourware to Accompany This Hype and Even LLM Slop in 'News' Clothing)
Remember "metaverse"? What happened to media hype about "blockchain" and "IoT"?
Report About February Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in 2025) Comes Back From the Dead
Yesterday we wrote about an article in CRN (reporting Microsoft layoffs) being removed without any reasons specified
Links 21/02/2025: Myanmar Scam Centre and Disruptions at USPTO
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 20, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, February 20, 2025
gbhackers.com is Not Hackers, It's LLM Slop Outputs (Fake 'Articles') That Attack 'True Hackers'
A site called linuxsecurity.com keeps doing this and now we see the slopfarm gbhackers.com doing the same
Gemini Links 20/02/2025: Law of Warming and Cooling, Health, and Devlog
Links for the day
linuxsecurity.com Continues to Spread Lies or Machine-Generated FUD (Microsoft LLMs Likely the Source) About OpenSSH and Linux
this LLM problem is global
Links 20/02/2025: Microsoft Infosys Layoffs and IRS Layoffs (Good News for Rich Tax Evaders)
Links for the day
IBM Layoffs in Europe Already Happening or Underway (UK and Spain). They Try Not to Call These "Layoffs".
"CIO" in particular was repeatedly mentioned lately, as was Consulting
People Who Came From Microsoft Demanding Removal of Articles About Them, About Microsoft, and About Microsoft GitHub is "Generous" (According to Them)
Imagine choosing a law firm that borrows money in the same year just to avoid overdraft in the bank!
Possibly a Third Round of Mass Layoffs at Microsoft in 2025 ("Cloud Solution Architects, Customer Roles"), Report Removed or Censored
This is literally the top story for "microsoft layoffs" right now
Instead of 'DoS Protection' Cloudflare is Allegedly Conducting 'DoS Attacks' on Users of Browsers Other Than Firefox and GAFAM's DRM Sandboxes (Chrome, Safari and Others)
If you value the Web, you will avoid Cloudflare
Mixing Real With Fake in One 'Article' (by "Director of Content, Help Net Security")
From what we can gather, he got machines to generate some slop for him
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, February 19, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, February 19, 2025