Bonum Certa Men Certa

Did IBM Just Nuke Fedora’s Mailing Lists?

Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer

Hyperkitty issues

This afternoon, I noticed that Fedora’s mailing lists, “Hyperkitty”, were down and all the server said was “varnish cache error”.



Now they are back up, but all of the messages are deleted and nobody has posted anything.



I suppose time will tell if this was actually an error, if they plan to recover things, and continue using it.



If it was IBM nuking the thing on purpose, it was another thing that it has done with no warning to anyone.



People were actively posting to it, including IBM’s Red Hat employees, right up to the end.



There has been a surge in “I am orphaning my packages. Good luck everybody else.” posts from developers and package maintainers that are finished with this IBM nonsense that’s been going on.



It’s quite possible that IBM made the decision to bring the hammer down to plug a source of “dirt” that bloggers, including myself, had been sourcing from those lists.



Mozilla used to operate in full view of the public, on newsgroups (NNTP) and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) (their own server), but under Mitchell Baker, Mozilla killed the IRC server and moved to a network of child molesters (matrix.org), but sent the development stuff to “Google Groups” (not an open standard) and marked many of them private so you can’t even see what’s going on in there.



As I reported previously, Matrix.org’s IRC bridge to Libera Chat was lopped off by Libera recently, citing a lack of moderation following major layoffs in the “trust and safety” division of the company that runs Matrix.org and Element (the Web client for the protocol).



They did not cite the child molesters on Matrix.org, but they did say this.



abuse load from the bridge that made use of easy anonymous registration and the protocol’s persistent and distributed archiving of files, including images, videos, and long messages converted to pastebins”

-Libera


Hmm, what kind of images and videos, I wonder? 😛



Matrix.org is basically dead at this point. The 10,000 people (1/4 of all Libera Chat users) who got booted from the Matrix.org side now need IRC accounts, and with the IRC bridges gone, and the child molesters roaming the place, Matrix.org is rapidly turning into a ghost town.



Back to IBM Red Hat, I would say that this is the biggest bungled merger since AOL TimeWarner.



Neither company was a good fit for each other, and IBM is scrapping Red Hat for itty bitty bits and pieces and burning Fedora down as it goes.



I suppose if Hyperkitty doesn’t re-appear soon, we will have our answer that Fedora will now be developed in the dark, like Firefox.



Almost as soon as IBM took over, some Red Hat employees, many of which were subsequently laid off, started complaining about the lack of “dogfooding”.



As IBM took over Red Hat, they started dismantling server infrastructure that had been built and paid for and throwing away software Red Hat had already written, which were sunk costs, and doling out expensive rents on contracts with “cloud vendors” like Microsoft and Google. Arguing that the never ending rent payments were more efficient.



Now they lay off and squeeze and squeeze. You know, it’s interesting that my username here is a contraction for “Baron Vladimir Harkonnen”, the infamous machiavellian “floating fat man” of Frank Herbert’s Dune. Not even death would kill the baron, as he resurrected in a sense in the minds of his descendants.



The people IBM has placed into upper management at Red Hat are sort of like “Beast Rabban”, the Baron’s “idiot nephew”, sent to lay waste to the company.



In the 1984 movie (not the best version, but still…),



“Rabban. I place you in charge of Arrakis. It’s yours to squeeze, as I promised. I want you to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze. Give me spice. Drive them. Drive them into utter submission. Do not show the slightest pity or mercy. Never stop. Go. Go. Show no mercy.”

-Baron Vladimir Harkonnen


This whole sort of mindset has crept into Fedora, too, where many of the “community” running the spins where IBM doesn’t care if they work or not (like KDE), are running “Edge on Windows” and “Safari on Mac”.



What does it do on my laptop? They don’t even know. They don’t run it on THEIR laptop.



openSUSE Leap 15.5 KDE at least appears as though the people making it use it.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Nat Friedman Had Left Microsoft GitHub Exactly One Week Before Matthew Garrett Sent His First SLAPP (Which Was an Empty Threat, He Was Abusing the Legal System of Another Continent to Terrorise Critics Who Had Just Unearthed Major Microsoft Scandals)
And it was likely talked about by his lawyers around the exact same time Nat Friedman was packing up
 
Pushing Microsoft's Proprietary Trash/Trap as "Open" and "Linux" (Windows is 'Linux' Now?)
Maybe it's time to just stop saying "FOSS". The people who use that term are promoting Microsoft.
Slopwatch: Comparing Linux to Vermin, Attacking BSD With LLM Slop, and Helping Microsoft Demonise Linux/OpenBSD/SSH Over Weak User Passwords
Microsoft must be laughing its arse off, seeing how a bunch of Serial Sloppers (no skills, no comprehension, no integrity, no creativity) and slopfarms use Microsoft LLM to flood the Web with anti-Linux FUD
Links 05/06/2025: US Poised for Another $2.4 Trillion to Debt, Cops Want GAFAM Kill Switches
Links for the day
Links 05/06/2025: First US Spacewalk 60 Years Ago, GNU Octave 10.2.0 is Out
Links for the day
Scandinavia Saying Goodbye to Microsoft
The Danes have had enough of Microsoft
GNU/Linux Measured at 6% in Bangladesh, According to statCounter
Windows isn't growing, it's going away
Gemini Links 05/06/2025: Loop Earplugs Review and ANS Forth
Links for the day
Armenian Adoption of GNU/Linux
Russian influence in Armenian must be worrying to Microsoft
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part II: Turning a Once-Respected Patent Office Into a Circus and Laughing Stock
It's not legal, but administrators who don't care about the law and don't fear the law would just go ahead and turn things to junk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 04, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, June 04, 2025
Slopwatch: Mindless Slop Pieces, Fake Images and Text, Linux FUD on the Cheap
spewed out by Microsoft-controlled LLMs
Links 04/06/2025: Workers' Strikes, Sudan Exodus
Links for the day
Links 04/06/2025: Linux Foundation PR Spam and Lee Jae-myung Wins Election
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/06/2025: Future Leaders of the World and Platforming Jordan Peterson
Links for the day
Links 04/06/2025: WSL Backfiring on Microsoft and "Disney, Microsoft Announce Massive Layoffs"
Links for the day
Our Case is a Very Easy Win, the SLAPPs From Microsofters Were a Grave Error, and Censoring Information Won't Work (It'll Only Ever Backfire)
Censoring is what people do when they lose the argument
Say the Truth, the Rest Will Follow
There's no guarantee that writing the truth will result in an audience (or readership), but over time - in the long run - people generally gravitate towards what they know or feel to be crude truth, not just what's comforting (albeit false or self-deluding, usually groupthink dictated from above)
How to Expose High-Level Corruption Without Getting in (Too Much) Trouble
Democracy depends on free press and freedom of the press depends on being able to safely publish (and keep available) material that bad people don't want to be known to anybody
In-Depth EPO Coverage at Techrights Turns Eleven
11 years is a very long time
Windows Measured Below 10% in Afghanistan, GNU/Linux Gaining a Lot
about 80% are Android (Linux) users, compared to only about 10% for Windows
Poland's Political Predicament and Social Control Media
Democracy and fake "tech" don't mix well; the latter tends to interfere with the former and that's why we get more "Putins" out there
EPO: Taking Away From the Staff to Give More to the Rich
The Central Staff Committee (CSC) wrote to EPO staff earlier this week
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 03, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, June 03, 2025
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part I: It's a Lot Like the EPO
we can commence a series soon
Gemini Links 04/06/2025: Inescapable Questions and Quitting All "Oligarch Tech"
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Linux FUD From Slopfarms, Blaming Linux for Microsoft Issues; Even WebProNews Has Become a Slopfarm (Googlebombing "Linux" With Slop Images and Fake/Plagiarised Text)
The Web is really getting bad; it's also overwhelmed by fake material or plagiarised material, wherein the plagiarism gets disguised/hidden by LLM sausage factories
Links 03/06/2025: Tiananmen Square Massacre Censorship and Growing Military Activities Around Taiwan
Links for the day
Linux is Already Dominant (Android), Let's Make GNU/Linux Dominant in Desktops/Laptops as Well
"Dr. Stallman recently warned everybody about Microsoft."
The Loyalty to Microsoft and the Salaries From Microsoft (Funding SLAPPs Against Techrights and Tux Machines)
Garrett always knows better. He knows everything best.
Windows Falls in Italy as GNU/Linux Jumps to 5%
Italy knows a thing or two about digital autonomy
Nigeria is All Android and Google
Windows down to almost nothing in Africa's largest population
Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (Second Wave) Not Limited to Redmond
"More layoffs at Microsoft as axe falls in Washington and California"
Gemini Links 03/06/2025: Forth System and "Common Lisp is a Dumpster"
Links for the day
The Leaks Were Right: Mass Layoffs at Microsoft in May, Then Another Wave in June
Just as we've been saying for over a month
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 02, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 02, 2025