Video download link | md5sum 04ba31ee1fe1ad6a6d9dc79ad096b315 What We Know About Red Hat Layoffs Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0



Summary: By abandoning OpenSource.com and OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice IBM sends out a clear signal that it doesn't understand or simply does not care about the community of Free software users; its siege against the FSF and other institutions never ended and today we look at who's being laid off or shown the door (the work environment is intentionally being made worse)

THE way IBM has been treating Red Hat leaves much to be desired, especially in more recent years. The layoffs started 3 years ago, but this year there's another wave and rants at thelayoff.com suggest that many may resign due to worsening work conditions.

More recently people noticed [1] (see bottom of this post) that LibreOffice had become orphaned in Red Hat land. Red Hat tried to explain this [2] and comments from the community (at LWN at least) weren't exactly favourable [3]. Later came more coverage [4-7].

"Both staff and volunteers who used to be heavily engaged in the project (and visible in Planet Fedora) are gradually disappearing."To be clear, this mistreatment by Red Hat executives isn't starting with IBM and LibreOffice; it's a years-long trend we've been taking note of. We recently received more confirmations about OpenSource.com being killed (but cannot elaborate on that for source protection's sake) and you won't hear about it from the site or from its staff. There seems to be some NDA, either informal/verbal or formal/written, somewhere out there...

This is also why people don't know which Fedora 'consultation' and 'coordination' (with the community) staff got the chop. Management folks keep their attacks on the community mostly silent. Ben Cotton wrote about it publicly. Reading between the lines, he gives away IBM's lack of interest in Fedora. Both staff and volunteers who used to be heavily engaged in the project (and visible in Planet Fedora) are gradually disappearing. Some get banished after years of volunteer work [1, 2]. IBM is only interested in submissive slaves, not a real community. Why would anyone still invest time contributing to IBM "projects"? ⬆

References:

1. Red Hat Stop Packaging LibreOffice as RPM for RHEL, Fedora

   “The tradeoff is that we are pivoting away from work we had been doing on desktop applications and will cease shipping LibreOffice as part of RHEL starting in a future RHEL version,” Clasen adds.

   LibreOffice will remain maintained and supported in all supported versions of RHEL (and Fedora) with security updates as and when needed.





2. LibreOffice packages

   as you've probably seen, the LibreOffice RPMS have recently been orphaned, and I thought it would be good to explain the reasons behind this.

   The Red Hat Display Systems team (the team behind most of Red Hat’s desktop efforts) has maintained the LibreOffice packages in Fedora for years as part of our work to support LibreOffice for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are adjusting our engineering priorities for RHEL for Workstations and focusing on gaps in Wayland, building out HDR support, building out what’s needed for color-sensitive work, and a host of other refinements required by Workstation users. This is work that will improve the workstation experience for Fedora as well as RHEL users, and which, we hope, will be positively received by the entire Linux community.

3. Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice [LWN.net]

   Red Hat's Matthias Clasan has let it be known that LibreOffice will be dropped from a future Red Hat Enterprise Linux release, and the future of its support in Fedora is unclear as well.

4. Red Hat to Cease Shipping LibreOffice in Further RHEL Releases

   Red Hat’s discontinuation of maintenance for LibreOffice will also affect Fedora, with the office suite expected to ship as a Flatpak.

   LibreOffice, born out of the OpenOffice.org project, has gained immense popularity over the years as a free alternative to proprietary office suites.

   Its compatibility with various document formats, robust features, and extensive community support has made it a favored choice for individuals, businesses, and educational institutions.

5. Red Hat is Dropping Its Support for LibreOffice - Slashdot

   The Red Hat Package Managers for LibreOffice "have recently been orphaned," according to a post by Red Hat manager Matthias Clasen on the "LibreOffice packages" mailing list, "and I thought it would be good to explain the reasons behind this."

6. The IBM Effect: Red Hat and Fedora ditching LibreOffice

   IBM's continued war on Desktop Linux has new casualties

7. Red Hat says it will drop LibreOffice from RHEL and Fedora

   He said the Red Hat Display System team, which looked after most of the company's desktop efforts, had been maintaining LibreOffice packages for Fedora, as part of its work to support the office suite in RHEL.

   "We are adjusting our engineering priorities for RHEL for Workstations and focusing on gaps in Wayland, building out HDR support, building out what’s needed for colour-sensitive work, and a host of other refinements required by Workstation users," Clasen added.

   {loadposition sam08}"This is work that will improve the workstation experience for Fedora as well as RHEL users, and which, we hope, will be positively received by the entire Linux community."

   However, the downside is that "we are pivoting away from work we had been doing on desktop applications and will cease shipping LibreOffice as part of RHEL starting in a future RHEL version. This also limits our ability to maintain it in future versions of Fedora".