Back in 2019, when IBM purchased Red Hat for $34 Billion dollars (b-b-b-biiiilion!), I predicted that Red Hat would begin to distance itself from everything that had made it famous (and profitable) — specifically, “Linux” and “Free and Open Source Software”.
Red Hat quickly proved Lunduke right
Then — right on cue, the very next year — Red Hat canceled CentOS (the free, community supported Linux distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux).
The motivation behind this move was obvious.
One of the primary reasons for the existence of CentOS was to be “binary compatible” with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Obviously CentOS was seen, by IBM, as possibly cutting into Red Hat sales… so it needed to die.
Was this a good business decision? Tough to say. But, putting the business and profitability aspects aside for a moment… it was difficult to see this massive shift in a years-long Red Hat policy as anything other than a declaration that Red Hat was moving away from their “Free Software” roots.
The CentOS community was angry about the change. And, rather quickly, a few new “CentOS replacement” Linux distributions sprang to life (including, most notably, Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux). Both existing far removed from the corporate control of Red Hat… but still based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux source code (which had been made available since the dawn of time).
At the time of the death of CentOS, I made a clear statement that this was only the beginning. That, whatever else happened to Red Hat and IBM over the coming years, we would see the Linux giant rapidly pull away from all things “Linux”.
Red Hat proved Lunduke right… again
Flash forward to 2023. Red Hat (under IBM) lays off 760 employees. Including a number of people who worked specifically on Fedora (the community Linux distribution) and other Free Software projects. Red Hat even eliminated the Fedora Project Manager role completely.
Once again this was — on a practical level — a dramatic reduction in Red Hat’s investment in Linux and Free Software.
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