Bonum Certa Men Certa

IBM Cannot Possibly Recover by Attacking the Software Community and Alienating Geeks

Video download link | md5sum 4f3d350031f416754e17a6c0008e4bf5



Summary: IBM is in a really bad state, even if the media fails to report on the matter; the video above (and post below, composed afterwards to accompany the video) takes stock of recent developments and what they mean to the future of the decreasingly "big" blue

The poor if not utterly appalling attitude of IBM, an arrogant strategy which wrongly assumes that IBM is "too big to fail", is definitely going to fail IBM; many people already leave in droves (an exodus, never mind the layoffs), making recovery or rebound improbable and maybe infeasible.



"Isn't it funny that the same companies which are working hard to ban/remove the word "master" are themselves treating people -- even volunteers -- like slaves (with masters being those conceited, self-righteous companies)?"Last week we wrote about Fedora blacklisting Persians; several other people have pointed out the same thing, albeit in harsher terms than ours (comparing Fedora/IBM to Hitler, which means suppressed IBM truths). As a matter of policy, Techrights cannot recommend GNU/Linux distros from IBM anymore; RHEL 8-based distros/clones are OK and the same is true for Arch Linux, Debian, Gentoo etc. (not Ubuntu though) because those who master the distros matter more than the underlying technical details. Isn't it funny that the same companies which are working hard to ban/remove the word "master" are themselves treating people -- even volunteers -- like slaves (with masters being those conceited, self-righteous companies*)?

This morning we published "5 Months Later People Still Remove Their Names From the Slanderous Anti-RMS Petition, Managed by IBM Staff" (related to "IBM is NOT a Friend of Free Software"). We've added this to examples of IBM "Attacking Communities/Volunteers" examples (see our IBM wiki). It's mostly visual with names occluded (it's nothing personal!) because the paymaster is what matters. A lot of people do what they're told by their bosses because they want to pay the bills (or a massive mortgage they should never have taken in the first place).

"The severe issues associated with staff morale cannot be overcome; it's years too late already and the attacks on the founder of GNU/Linux are going to make it very difficult to hire geeks."Today we discuss the defamatory letter crafted more than 5 months ago by IBM-funded front groups that still want to weaken the Free Software Foundation by taking away its founder and its copyrights (GNU Project copyright assignments) because IBM -- unlike Red Hat -- does not seem to understand how copyleft works (which would help explain the self-harming decision to abandon CentOS users). Based on what IBM and insiders write anonymously online, IBM has no future, only lots more layoffs. It has a very severe staff retention crisis and it is unable to recruit the necessary talent. IBM, once the sole giant of computing, is now worth less than AMD and SAP; it's trying to split the company to manufacture an illusion of growth (profitability has been down by about 50% in the past half a decade alone), but that's just classic 'creative accounting' (shuffling the buckets -- same thing Microsoft does). The severe issues associated with staff morale cannot be overcome; it's years too late already and the attacks on the founder of GNU/Linux are going to make it very difficult to hire geeks. Yes, geeks aren't stupid and many view those attacks as collective.

In the video we walk through some recent discussions about the company (mostly existing and former staff in thelayoff.com) since the media is failing to report on these things. It's too busy looking for corporate sponsors instead of covering corporate abuse, including deception. Due to the scale of IBM (historically), there are still loads of "ex-IBM" folks out there; some of them worry about their IBM pensions and remember fondly some of the things IBM did actually invent (mostly hardware). But that IBM is long gone and now it's mostly a financial manipulation instrument in service of managers and grifters, not engineers. IBM's President Jim Whitehurst left the company and went back to his home state; he could see the writings on the wall...

"The attack on Stallman came less than a year later, coinciding with a Bill Gates scandal at MIT (he, unlike Stallman, was actually very closely connected to Jeffrey Epstein)."For quite some time now IBM has been trying to privatise GNU and Linux so as to make volunteers' hard work their own monopoly (of course they will fail, but they still try!). Microsoft has been trying the same when it bought GitHub. One source of ours has insinuated for more than a couple of years that the attacks which led to Torvalds' removal from his own project (to see therapists) was caused by IBM-connected media and this was likely motivated by an effort to reduce the buying price of Red Hat (the time of those two events was almost the same; there was overlap), but the source was unable to verify this with 'smoking gun'-type evidence. The attack on Richard Stallman came less than a year later, coinciding with a Bill Gates scandal at MIT (he, unlike Stallman, was actually very closely connected to Jeffrey Epstein). _____ * ZDNet, which kept telling us "master" as a word is offensive, published "Master" in its headline only moments ago (very first word in the headline). They keep putting their hypocrisy and double standards up on display.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Good Explanation of Why IBM Has Chosen to Conceal Mass Layoffs (of 'Expensive' Staff) as "R.T.O." (Even For People Who Never Worked at the Office to Which They're Ordered to "Return")
Many remaining IBM (or Red Hat) workers in Europe are in "cheaper" places such as Brno
Microsoft's Serial Strangler and Matthew J. Garrett Join Forces in Trying to Gag Techrights (for Exposing Microsoft Corruption and Crimes Against Women)
Whose terrible idea was it?
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
 
Politicians Ought to Invite Dr. Richard Stallman and Prof. Eben Moglen to Speak About Policies, Licensing, Digital Sovereignty
Is there something in Europe other than RMS' talk this coming Monday (that we're not yet aware of)?
Links 22/02/2025: Labour Department Investigates Microsoft Infosys Amid Mass Layoffs, Large Law Firms Caught Red Handed With LLM Slop (Defrauding Clients and Courts)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/02/2025: Analog Stuff, Sigil, and SSGs
Links for the day
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