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IBM strikes again. The recent closing of build files of RHEL, now telemetry in Fedora. At least it doesn't have ads like Ubuntu amirite... Spyware everywhere.

IBM strikes again. The recent closing of build files of RHEL, now telemetry in Fedora. At least it doesn't have ads like Ubuntu amirite... Spyware everywhere. Not that I'd ever use Fedora as my main Desktop OS. Arch has won that battle. And if I want a simple installer, where everything just works, Manjaro.

rwmj 3y ago
It's so tedious every time people ascribe some action of Fedora or Red Hat to IBM. This is nothing to do with IBM. Red Hat can and does make these decisions all by itself.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  But these things happened after IBM acquired Red Hat and IBM certainly has the power to instruct Red Hat to steer clear from any actions that might turn the FOSS community against them.
  - MoreQARespect 3y ago
    It's so tedious seeing how many people don't get this. Enshittification following a buyout is practically a rite of passage.
  - rwmj 3y ago
    I work at Red Hat and interact daily with the people making the decisions and it has nothing to do with IBM! In fact they run Red Hat (surprisingly) hands-off. And this particular proposal comes from GNOME who have been making terrible decisions long before IBM acquired Red Hat.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Then maybe IBM should get involved, but in a positive way to let it be known that they risk brand and image damage from these stupid moves and kindly ask for them to stop.
      - rwmj 3y ago
        So you'd like it if IBM micromanaged Red Hat? Got it.
        jacquesm 3y ago
        You're being somewhat annoying in this thread, that's the second time that you are purposefully misinterpreting a comment. I really don't understand what it is that you are trying to achieve but if it is of any help: you are making RedHat look pretty bad and insensitve to end user concerns.
- tokai 3y ago
  Maybe you should have mentioned that you work for Red Hat.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Which is where the original proposal originated. https://lwn.net/ml/fedora-devel/CAJqbrbeOZrHvYjvMCc=qGZD_VXBs3-qReeirr+F8t01Eq1sYhw@mail.gmail.com/ https://lwn.net/ml/fedora-devel/CAJqbrbeOZrHvYjvMCc=qGZD_VXB... Really, given that "One of the main goals of metrics collection is to analyze whether Red Hat is achieving its goal to make Fedora Workstation the premier developer platform for cloud software development." is right there in the text it would seem pretty clear to me that the 'Fedora Community' (in sofar as one exists) is just Red Hat in disguise serving its own interests here, and at arms length to see what the response is. Think of it as a trial balloon which will certainly be followed by more clicks of the ratchet.
    - rwmj 3y ago
      And that has to do with IBM how exactly?
      - mardifoufs 3y ago
        That's pretty disingenuous. Are we supposed to pretend that IBM bought redhat to do exactly nothing with it? It's not exactly far fetched to assume that redhat's owners influence redhat. We can't prove that every decision is directly coming from IBM but the point is moot. Redhat is IBM.
        rwmj 3y ago
        I actually work at Red Hat and IBM are very hands off. I'm quite surprised myself in fact, as I predicted that IBM would absorb Red Hat in one way or another. However you believe whatever you want.
        always2slow 3y ago
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Would Red Hat do anything that would anger IBM? Would Red Hat refuse to do anything that IBM felt strongly about? I seriously doubt it.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    Do you really think IBM cares enough about Fedora to mandate the insertion of telemetry, possibly upsetting everybody at Red Hat that works on it? It seems so much more likely to me that the Fedora team just wants telemetry data (which is very standard in the industry) for decision making, exactly as they said.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > Do you really think IBM cares enough about Fedora to mandate the insertion of telemetry, possibly upsetting everybody at Red Hat that works on it? Yes, I think that's well within the realm of possibility. IBM bought Red Hat for some reason, so they obvious care quite a lot. I'm not saying they're actually doing this, of course. I don't know. But we're talking about large corporations here, so suspicion seems warranted. > It seems so much more likely to me that the Fedora team just wants telemetry data (which is very standard in the industry) for decision making, exactly as they said. I think this is true! Both things can be true. Standard in the industry, though? No. It's standard in the commercial software world (which is one of the reasons why I avoid commercial software), but it's not standard in the FOSS world. The reason why I object so strongly to these sorts of moves from Fedora (and other such outfits) is because there's clearly a strong effort being made to normalize this in the FOSS world, and I think that would be tragic.
- 2b3a51 3y ago
  Does 'Red Hat' actually exist as a separate entity? Is there any 'relative autonomy' entity for Red Hat, like a board of directors or a council of any kind. Or is Red Hat simply a department in a larger structure? This question is not meant to be rhetorical or challenging.
  - dralley 3y ago
    As someone who currently works for Red Hat, yes. Red Hat is more than just a "department within a larger structure", it retains a separate CEO (who reports to IBM, yes), a separate human resources department, separate marketing events, we (apart from maybe a few dozen people) do not have IBM email addresses nor do we use their internal systems or vendors (except for e.g. Employee Stock Purchase Plan). There is almost no interaction between Red Hat and IBM employees apart from the highest levels. Most of the decisions/changes which people attribute to IBM fall into one of a few categories: * What tends to happen to any company when it doubles / triples in size to >20,000 employees, as Red Hat did from 2017 to 2023. * Leadership shuffles, such as when Jim was replaced by Paul when Jim became President of IBM. (This happened at the same time as the acquisition, but just because one CEO made choices differently than another might have doesn't make IBM directly responsible for those decisions). * The rise of Amazon, Google, Microsoft / PaaS and SaaS / containers sucking a lot of air out of the traditional Red Hat market segment. RHEL is still an important cornerstone of the company, but remaining a successful company 10 years from now will require finding additional niches and creating value in ways that are not as vulnerable to entities 100x our size.
    - 2b3a51 3y ago
      Well thanks for engaging with the question. So no separate governance/board of directors and a CEO who reports to IBM. Some services not merged (yet). Redundancies in a landscape that is changing. Best of luck.
      - dralley 3y ago
        >So no separate governance/board of governors I'm struggling to think of any company, anywhere, that has that kind of arrangement after an acquisition. Can you point one out? >Some services not merged (yet). No services have been merged as far as I know, other than the ones that are literally impossible to not merge, such as the employee stock purchase plan. Please do not twist what I said. Health insurance is separate, 401k is separate, IT systems are separate. As far as I know the expense system is separate (I haven't needed to use it in years, and I'm on vacation so I can't check). >Redundancies in a landscape that is changing. What is even the point of saying this? You asked if there was separation and then dismiss evidence of separation as "redundancies" [that won't last]. I can't predict the future, but the way HN talks about Red Hat you would think the entity known as Red Hat no longer exists (or only barely so). The separation has remained constant for 4 years so far. Not sure what else to say.
heywoodlh 3y ago
> if I want a simple installer where everything just works I actually feel like the archinstall[0] tool included in the official Arch ISOs really nails easy installation. It's an official way to install Arch that is incredibly user friendly and fast, in my opinion. [0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  thank you for sharing this. one of my hesitations around Arch was the effort to set it up -- I'm too old and too busy to deal with doing it all by hand. I ran Gentoo back in college, did LFS once -- all good learning experiences -- but Fedora or Ubuntu can get me a usable system in 20 minutes and I don't have to think too hard about anything except basic partitioning and a password. This looks like it'll get me something working, but not commit me to a full-on Manjaro install.
  - heywoodlh 3y ago
    > thank you for sharing this. Absolutely! Archinstall is so nice to just get a system up and running quickly. And not many installers (i.e. on other distros) give you so many options for desktop environments. archinstall is a great tool!

rwmj 3y ago

It's so tedious every time people ascribe some action of Fedora or Red Hat to IBM. This is nothing to do with IBM. Red Hat can and does make these decisions all by itself.

jacquesm 3y ago
But these things happened after IBM acquired Red Hat and IBM certainly has the power to instruct Red Hat to steer clear from any actions that might turn the FOSS community against them.
- MoreQARespect 3y ago
  It's so tedious seeing how many people don't get this. Enshittification following a buyout is practically a rite of passage.
- rwmj 3y ago
  I work at Red Hat and interact daily with the people making the decisions and it has nothing to do with IBM! In fact they run Red Hat (surprisingly) hands-off. And this particular proposal comes from GNOME who have been making terrible decisions long before IBM acquired Red Hat.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Then maybe IBM should get involved, but in a positive way to let it be known that they risk brand and image damage from these stupid moves and kindly ask for them to stop.
    - rwmj 3y ago
      So you'd like it if IBM micromanaged Red Hat? Got it.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        You're being somewhat annoying in this thread, that's the second time that you are purposefully misinterpreting a comment. I really don't understand what it is that you are trying to achieve but if it is of any help: you are making RedHat look pretty bad and insensitve to end user concerns.
tokai 3y ago
Maybe you should have mentioned that you work for Red Hat.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Which is where the original proposal originated. https://lwn.net/ml/fedora-devel/CAJqbrbeOZrHvYjvMCc=qGZD_VXBs3-qReeirr+F8t01Eq1sYhw@mail.gmail.com/ https://lwn.net/ml/fedora-devel/CAJqbrbeOZrHvYjvMCc=qGZD_VXB... Really, given that "One of the main goals of metrics collection is to analyze whether Red Hat is achieving its goal to make Fedora Workstation the premier developer platform for cloud software development." is right there in the text it would seem pretty clear to me that the 'Fedora Community' (in sofar as one exists) is just Red Hat in disguise serving its own interests here, and at arms length to see what the response is. Think of it as a trial balloon which will certainly be followed by more clicks of the ratchet.
  - rwmj 3y ago
    And that has to do with IBM how exactly?
    - mardifoufs 3y ago
      That's pretty disingenuous. Are we supposed to pretend that IBM bought redhat to do exactly nothing with it? It's not exactly far fetched to assume that redhat's owners influence redhat. We can't prove that every decision is directly coming from IBM but the point is moot. Redhat is IBM.
      - rwmj 3y ago
        I actually work at Red Hat and IBM are very hands off. I'm quite surprised myself in fact, as I predicted that IBM would absorb Red Hat in one way or another. However you believe whatever you want.
        always2slow 3y ago
JohnFen 3y ago
Would Red Hat do anything that would anger IBM? Would Red Hat refuse to do anything that IBM felt strongly about? I seriously doubt it.
- freedomben 3y ago
  Do you really think IBM cares enough about Fedora to mandate the insertion of telemetry, possibly upsetting everybody at Red Hat that works on it? It seems so much more likely to me that the Fedora team just wants telemetry data (which is very standard in the industry) for decision making, exactly as they said.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > Do you really think IBM cares enough about Fedora to mandate the insertion of telemetry, possibly upsetting everybody at Red Hat that works on it? Yes, I think that's well within the realm of possibility. IBM bought Red Hat for some reason, so they obvious care quite a lot. I'm not saying they're actually doing this, of course. I don't know. But we're talking about large corporations here, so suspicion seems warranted. > It seems so much more likely to me that the Fedora team just wants telemetry data (which is very standard in the industry) for decision making, exactly as they said. I think this is true! Both things can be true. Standard in the industry, though? No. It's standard in the commercial software world (which is one of the reasons why I avoid commercial software), but it's not standard in the FOSS world. The reason why I object so strongly to these sorts of moves from Fedora (and other such outfits) is because there's clearly a strong effort being made to normalize this in the FOSS world, and I think that would be tragic.
2b3a51 3y ago
Does 'Red Hat' actually exist as a separate entity? Is there any 'relative autonomy' entity for Red Hat, like a board of directors or a council of any kind. Or is Red Hat simply a department in a larger structure? This question is not meant to be rhetorical or challenging.
- dralley 3y ago
  As someone who currently works for Red Hat, yes. Red Hat is more than just a "department within a larger structure", it retains a separate CEO (who reports to IBM, yes), a separate human resources department, separate marketing events, we (apart from maybe a few dozen people) do not have IBM email addresses nor do we use their internal systems or vendors (except for e.g. Employee Stock Purchase Plan). There is almost no interaction between Red Hat and IBM employees apart from the highest levels. Most of the decisions/changes which people attribute to IBM fall into one of a few categories: * What tends to happen to any company when it doubles / triples in size to >20,000 employees, as Red Hat did from 2017 to 2023. * Leadership shuffles, such as when Jim was replaced by Paul when Jim became President of IBM. (This happened at the same time as the acquisition, but just because one CEO made choices differently than another might have doesn't make IBM directly responsible for those decisions). * The rise of Amazon, Google, Microsoft / PaaS and SaaS / containers sucking a lot of air out of the traditional Red Hat market segment. RHEL is still an important cornerstone of the company, but remaining a successful company 10 years from now will require finding additional niches and creating value in ways that are not as vulnerable to entities 100x our size.
  - 2b3a51 3y ago
    Well thanks for engaging with the question. So no separate governance/board of directors and a CEO who reports to IBM. Some services not merged (yet). Redundancies in a landscape that is changing. Best of luck.
    - dralley 3y ago
      >So no separate governance/board of governors I'm struggling to think of any company, anywhere, that has that kind of arrangement after an acquisition. Can you point one out? >Some services not merged (yet). No services have been merged as far as I know, other than the ones that are literally impossible to not merge, such as the employee stock purchase plan. Please do not twist what I said. Health insurance is separate, 401k is separate, IT systems are separate. As far as I know the expense system is separate (I haven't needed to use it in years, and I'm on vacation so I can't check). >Redundancies in a landscape that is changing. What is even the point of saying this? You asked if there was separation and then dismiss evidence of separation as "redundancies" [that won't last]. I can't predict the future, but the way HN talks about Red Hat you would think the entity known as Red Hat no longer exists (or only barely so). The separation has remained constant for 4 years so far. Not sure what else to say.

heywoodlh 3y ago

> if I want a simple installer where everything just works I actually feel like the archinstall[0] tool included in the official Arch ISOs really nails easy installation. It's an official way to install Arch that is incredibly user friendly and fast, in my opinion. [0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall

red-iron-pine 3y ago
thank you for sharing this. one of my hesitations around Arch was the effort to set it up -- I'm too old and too busy to deal with doing it all by hand. I ran Gentoo back in college, did LFS once -- all good learning experiences -- but Fedora or Ubuntu can get me a usable system in 20 minutes and I don't have to think too hard about anything except basic partitioning and a password. This looks like it'll get me something working, but not commit me to a full-on Manjaro install.
- heywoodlh 3y ago
  > thank you for sharing this. Absolutely! Archinstall is so nice to just get a system up and running quickly. And not many installers (i.e. on other distros) give you so many options for desktop environments. archinstall is a great tool!