Fedora Program Manager Laid Off As Part Of Red Hat Cuts

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora Program Manager Laid Off As Part Of Red Hat Cuts

As part of the Red Hat layoffs announced in April with around a 4% reduction in headcount for the IBM-owneed company, one of the surprising casualties from that round of cost-cutting is the Fedora Program Manager...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-PM-Red-Hat-Laid-Off

[cynic]

I would like to know that too. I wonder how they have chosen him over the staff at diversity-equity-inclusion. He seems to have been giving value to the software.

Apparently IBM/RH manager don't know the saying "Get woke, go broke"

[CommunityMember]

Fedora Program Manager Ben Cotton was unfortunately laid off as part of the layoffs announced in March.

I had noticed that some emails on the development list that had nominally been sent by Ben were now being sent by others, but my first guess was a vacation. I guess I now know the real reason.

I wish I had a clearer understanding of how they chose people/roles to cut, but I’ll probably never know the process.

The full details for the reasoning(s) are almost never shared by the company in order to protect the company (especially in the most litigious country in the world).

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Given the responsibilities that the Program Manager had (who was, in essence, the Fedora COO), the elimination of that role is likely to have longer term implications for certain activities that the Fedora community has come to expect and depend on (it seems unlikely that all of the responsibilities can be reassigned to others without something having to get dropped).

[toves]

My guess is that most of RH's new IBM overlords don't understand the Fedora project's strategic input to the future downstream Redhat Enterprise products. The tawdry goose that lay the golden eggs. CentOS plays a different role but still enhances the final product. IBM's straffing of both projects may well ultimately reduce the competitiveness the Redhat portfolio.
Plenty of alternatives (Linux and Unix) out there or could easily commercialize if a niche opened.
I sometimes wonder how OpenSolaris would fare if the Democlean sword of Oracle wasn't suspended over the project. Revisiting the OpenIndiana distribution a few months ago I was reminded that Solaris (SunOS 5) is a very solid OS.
I had to smile at the woke/broke rhyme.
Woken, stroken,... broken.

[emansom]

Definitely worth firing him and keeping all the fluff LinkedIn people. Not like Red Hat requires real engineering skills, rite?!

Rocky is the way forward. This ship has been slowly steering into an iceberg for half a century.

[xxmitsu]

The crisis is here, it's just that very few want to admit..

Everyone seems to be cutting costs and firing ppl. The company that I work for, is in a process of closing all operation in my country. Everyone will lose their jobs by the end of 2023. I was lucky enough to be in a key role that needs to make some handovers.. otherwise my contract would have ended at the end of fiscal year (June).

..

[skeevy420]

I'll never understand the "Red Hat Sucks, Use Alma or Rocky" mentality. It makes no sense*. emansom, if RHEL is steering into an iceberg, how is Rocky Linux not doing the same?

I lol'd at the thought of Red Hat Cuts being the name of their current initiative.

*Don't get me wrong, I totally understand giving a big "UP YOURS" towards IBM by promoting the free clone version of their supposedly superior stable LTS Linux OS (that reputation IS why people and companies use RHEL).

Non-free open source? WTF? Here's a free clone version. UP YOURS, IBM. I get that.

However, not liking RHEL for technical or managerial reasons while promoting Rocky or Alma is like saying the Ku Klux Klan is bad so you join the clone organization Cu Clux Clan that does everything identically to the bad organization, only they have a different name so that makes them somehow better. Following the NAZI's is supposed to be bad, but following those that 1:1 imitate the NAZIs is somehow OK? I don't get that.

[Oppenheimer]

Jim Salter (formerly of ArsTechnica-shitting-on-btrfs) on Friday's episode of the podcast 2.5admins was saying that Redhat is about to be a lot less about open-source. He couldn't elaborate and said we'd have to wait to find out more. Loosening or cutting the tries to Fedora might just be the tip.

[anarki2]

"Cotton was also part of those that brought up the CentOS Stream program."

And that's the moment I stopped feeling pitty for him.

[gbcox]

Jim Salter (formerly of ArsTechnica-shitting-on-btrfs) on Friday's episode of the podcast 2.5admins was saying that Redhat is about to be a lot less about open-source. He couldn't elaborate and said we'd have to wait to find out more. Loosening or cutting the tries to Fedora might just be the tip.

ROFL, another Nostradamus type vague prediction that could mean anything. Layoffs happen all the time, it's part of reality in a capitalistic society. Managers are ordered to cut staff, and sometimes after they cut staff they are also cut. Regarding "wokeness", that's not the blame for layoffs, and the implication that "wokeness" (which means btw, being alert to and concerned about social injustice and discrimination) is just bizarre. It's like the trope that antifa is somehow a bad thing. Since when is being anti-fascist bad?

Fedora will continue to be just fine. Yes, there are many Redhat employees in the project, but there are also scores of volunteers who contribute. Fedora isn't in danger of going away anytime soon, especially because of a Redhat layoff.