IBM's Red Hat Has Stopped Competing With Microsoft
THE sad reality is, Planet Fedora is almost dying (barely active anymore; it used to be about 5 times more active) and many Fedora volunteers realise that IBM views them as slaves or unpaid staff. Meanwhile, like Ubuntu/Canonical, it seems like the end goal is to sell something to Microsoft. It is a form of sellout. Novell did this in 2006. Its CEO had come from IBM and failed to understand GNU/Linux. He thought Steve Ballmer would save him. Ray Noorda, a former Novell CEO and Chairman (he died shortly earlier), famously said "Pearly Gates and Em-Ballmer: One promises you heaven and the other prepares you for the grave."
It's happening again. History is repeating.
In Canonical's case, it's the 'Microsoftisation' of Debian (back doors added by Microsoft) and Windows (WSL).
In the case of Red Hat, Fedora is just a pool of volunteers (unpaid testers and packagers) and even CentOS is now being marketed as "Azure".
Red Hat doesn't care about Freedom!
It even helps Microsoft make money.
Published yesterday:
It is a ludicrous promotional piece (link omitted), but this is what we've come to expect from Red Hat. Its official site, redhat.com, is promoting proprietary Microsoft stuff a lot more often than before and it is also promoting Microsoft staff as authors.
Shouldn't redhat.com promote GNU/Linux?
See Gizmodo's "Still Using Windows 10? Microsoft Will Charge Hundreds for Security Updates" or "Outrageous: Microsoft to charge $61 for Windows 10 updates -- consider switching to Linux!" (from Beta News).
To quote Beta News: "Hold on to your hats, folks, because Microsoft is at it again. In a move that’s sure to ruffle some feathers, the tech giant has announced* that starting October 2024, just one year before Windows 10 reaches its end of support, the company will charge a whopping $61 per device for the first year of Extended Security Updates (ESU). And get this – the price will double every consecutive year for a maximum of three years! If you’re late to the party and join in Year Two, you’ll have to cough up the cash for Year One as well since these updates are cumulative. Talk about a slap in the face!"
An associate has noted that "obviously Canonical and IBM/Red Hat are refusing to make hay with this," but as usual they don't. We said the same in past years and even as recently as a fortnight ago. Instead of competing with Windows they focus on helping Microsoft. What are antitrust regulators busy doing? Chasing Microsoft's rivals instead of Microsoft?
The community interests are also being undermined, not served, by the Linux Foundation (despite its name) and hours ago the FFII's president E-mailed me to remind me that OpenForum Europe (OFE) - like OIN - is working for American companies, mostly large corporations or monopolies, lobbying in Europe under the guise of "open" (even if what they offer to sell is proprietary with some openwashing slant). IBM et al have instrumentalised the FSFE and OIN is connected to that in the staffing sense (several OIN employees were also in FSFE).
"I had a discussion with [OIN CEO] Keith Bergelt last year at OFE pre-FOSDEM event," the FFII's president told me, "it is quite clear that it is IBM pulling the strings of OFE. I offered him a free yellow tshirt [against software patents], he refused :-)"