IBM is Obliterating Fedora
"Fedora releases were shipping with an increasing number of bugs on launch day even while I was using it for a several year stretch." -Someone in IRC
We now see more rumours or comments about Red Hat layoffs this coming Monday (August 11th, 2025), allegedly directed by IBM [1, 2].
Over a year ago we saw reports from Red Hat employees about IBM relocating/reassigning them to non-Red Hat and non-Fedora activities, for instance neglecting to make builds of particular applications for Fedora, even if that didn't take much of their time. They just push bloated packages instead. Logikal Solutions has just complained about such practices ("flatpaks"), calling it "Use of Agile instead of actual Software Engineering."
So what is the future of Fedora? Planet Fedora seems pretty much dead, except for occasional posts from official sites of Fedora and sometimes blurbs from some Red Hat staff (writing about topics that are not Fedora; some are rambles about life in general).
An article by former Red Hat employee Joe Brockmeier ("Smaller Fedora quality team proposes cuts"), which was released from the LWN paywall a few hours ago, gives some numbers:
Fedora's quality team is looking to reduce the scope of test coverage and change the project's release criteria to drop some features from the list of release blockers. This is, in part, an exercise in getting rid of criteria, such as booting from optical media, that are less relevant. It is also a necessity, since the Red Hat team focusing on Fedora quality assurance (QA) is only half the size it was a year ago.
The team is responsible for a host of activities which include testing of software, running test days, maintaining tools for test automation, and coordinating the Fedora release process with the release engineering team. The quality team is composed of Red Hat employees and Fedora community contributors, but it is fair to say that the bulk of the team's work is done by those employed to by Red Hat.
Unfortunately, according to an announcement by Kamil Páral, a member of the team, there is a somewhat urgent need to reduce its workload. Six out of ten Red Hat employees who had been working on the team have chosen to move to other teams within Red Hat over the past nine months, or have left Red Hat altogether. Only one new person has joined the team. Páral pointed out in the announcement that this was not the result of a layoff or intentional reduction of the quality team; he said that the moves were ""truly decisions of our colleagues"", some of whom opted to move to AI-focused roles or other jobs within Red Hat.
[...]
So far, the quality scope-reduction announcement has not generated as much response as one might expect. This is probably, at least in part, because it's peak vacation season in much of the Northern Hemisphere; many of the usual participants in Fedora discussions may be enjoying time away from their computers. It may also be because of the venue chosen for the discussion; Páral asked that feedback be restricted to the Discourse forum when he sent the announcement to the fedora-devel mailing list. Fedora is a project with a long history, and many of its participants still prefer to discuss things via email rather than web forums.
After Fedora and Red Hat this author began working for LWN. His analysis of the situation confirms what we've long sensed. IBM just doesn't care about Fedora any more than it cares about CentOS.
The only comment on the article seems to be from Red Hat staff who said: "A quick note for anybody interested, but can't spare the time to read the full post: We are hiring to replace several of people who moved."
So that confirms people "moved". If there are layoffs next week, then it'll ruin the narrative of "Also: We're hiring". █
