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Summary: Red Hat's longstanding and long-established Web sites are becoming more proprietary as they abandon their original focus and adherence to standards; worse yet, they promote proprietary stuff for Microsoft (possibly an HR issue; Red Hat tactlessly hired managers from Microsoft)

THERE is a severe problem that's we've mostly covered in prior videos and in IRC. IBM has turned more and more Red Hat Web sites into "apps" that aren't accessible. They require proprietary JavaScript. Accessibility and standards out the window. Just like that. IBM should really know better, but it probably quit caring.

In all fairness, some of these trends occasionally predated the IBM acquisition, e.g. the way Red Hat had written press releases to help Microsoft. With IBM at the wheel, however, there is drastic escalation.

"IBM has basically become somewhat of a vandal."Put aside the Red Hat layoffs and the exodus, which are very well documented. What on Earth is IBM doing? It's ruining Fedora like it ruined CentOS, it's defaming the founder of GNU/Linux, it blackmails the FSF, and then takes control of GNU projects (and their copyrights) in a hostile fashion, via employees inherited from Red Hat.

IBM has basically become somewhat of a vandal.

The video above speaks of one aspect that was recently explored here in relation to IBM running Microsoft-sponsored placements in OpenSource.com (the editor is IBM staff), basically helping an anti-GPL agenda. That's an attack on copyleft, not on copyrights, encouraging GPL violations or making GPL enforcement a lot harder. Part of a trend?

This morning they ran pseudonym's promotion of proprietary software (of Microsoft!) in OpenSource.com, so where does this end? I summarise some of these issues in the video above. ⬆