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Well, that seems grim. It's unlikely that IBM have chosen one developer to reassign to more obviously revenue generating activity, so this should probably be ta

Well, that seems grim. It's unlikely that IBM have chosen one developer to reassign to more obviously revenue generating activity, so this should probably be taken as warning that red hat's open source contribution is winding down. I have a nasty suspicion that their engineers were a significant component to GNU software working. RHEL was profitable before, despite frivolously making software work without immediate reward. Perhaps the best outcome of this is to accept that RHEL is dead and there is an opening in the market for a new company doing what red hat used to. Probably based on Debian instead.

reisse 3y ago
Counterpoint: as a person who used Fedora and then Ubuntu daily for the last four years, and is watching closely for the new features in every release, this feels _fantastic_, but only if Red Hat delivers on the features they're pivoting to (HDR, proper high-resolution support, Wayland). Revenue-generating activity, as you named it, are the things I wait for and don't get in every next release, while RH spends (well, used to spend) resources and money for repackaging Libre Office, rewriting gedit from scratch, writing custom video player and so on. I don't need all that, I need triple buffering for smooth 60 fps interface, proper screen sharing in Wayland, working fractional scaling, but every other release there is only another GNOME redesign, another GNOME application, another features here and there. Pivoting to improving system fundamentals instead is a _good_ thing.
- di4na 3y ago
  You realise you will got hdr but not working bluetooth and mices?
  - reisse 3y ago
    gnome-bluetooth is only a GUI, the backend is BlueZ stack. Even if GUI part stops working the second it becomes unmaintained (which is not the case), the backend will continue to work, and you can choose any other frontend you like - see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/bluetooth https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/bluetooth .
    - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
      And who exactly contributes to BlueZ? Even ChromeOS, which I previously argued was actually closer to desktop Linux than Android is, keeps trying to replace it with Android's horrible BT stack.
      - reisse 3y ago
        See for yourself, it's public - https://github.com/bluez/bluez/graphs/contributors https://github.com/bluez/bluez/graphs/contributors. Top contributions are from Johan Hedberg, Marcel Holtmann, and Luiz Augusto von Dentz if we're dropping names, or from Intel if we're speaking about corporations.
  - michaelt 3y ago
    Right but every experienced desktop Linux user knows better than to expect bluetooth to work :)
JeremyNT 3y ago
Yes, it's very disappointing, although not surprising. I'm especially sad that Rhythmbox is going to be unmaintained. I use it almost every day (and am currently using it right now). In general I prefer GNOME and its utilities over KDE equivalents and use it extensively. However, much of the GNOME ecosystem is directly or indirectly supported by Red Hat, which has been a good steward historically. Now under IBM, this belt tightening seems to put that entire ecosystem at peril. Perhaps KDE will prove to be a more resilient choice?

reisse 3y ago

Counterpoint: as a person who used Fedora and then Ubuntu daily for the last four years, and is watching closely for the new features in every release, this feels _fantastic_, but only if Red Hat delivers on the features they're pivoting to (HDR, proper high-resolution support, Wayland). Revenue-generating activity, as you named it, are the things I wait for and don't get in every next release, while RH spends (well, used to spend) resources and money for repackaging Libre Office, rewriting gedit from scratch, writing custom video player and so on. I don't need all that, I need triple buffering for smooth 60 fps interface, proper screen sharing in Wayland, working fractional scaling, but every other release there is only another GNOME redesign, another GNOME application, another features here and there. Pivoting to improving system fundamentals instead is a _good_ thing.

di4na 3y ago
You realise you will got hdr but not working bluetooth and mices?
- reisse 3y ago
  gnome-bluetooth is only a GUI, the backend is BlueZ stack. Even if GUI part stops working the second it becomes unmaintained (which is not the case), the backend will continue to work, and you can choose any other frontend you like - see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/bluetooth https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/bluetooth .
  - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
    And who exactly contributes to BlueZ? Even ChromeOS, which I previously argued was actually closer to desktop Linux than Android is, keeps trying to replace it with Android's horrible BT stack.
    - reisse 3y ago
      See for yourself, it's public - https://github.com/bluez/bluez/graphs/contributors https://github.com/bluez/bluez/graphs/contributors. Top contributions are from Johan Hedberg, Marcel Holtmann, and Luiz Augusto von Dentz if we're dropping names, or from Intel if we're speaking about corporations.
- michaelt 3y ago
  Right but every experienced desktop Linux user knows better than to expect bluetooth to work :)

JeremyNT 3y ago

Yes, it's very disappointing, although not surprising. I'm especially sad that Rhythmbox is going to be unmaintained. I use it almost every day (and am currently using it right now). In general I prefer GNOME and its utilities over KDE equivalents and use it extensively. However, much of the GNOME ecosystem is directly or indirectly supported by Red Hat, which has been a good steward historically. Now under IBM, this belt tightening seems to put that entire ecosystem at peril. Perhaps KDE will prove to be a more resilient choice?