The Fedora community has a bad taste in the mouth for the dismissal of ben cotton
A few weeks ago Red Hat, like many of the largest companies, had a downsizing movement. and now as part of a previously announced 4% reduction in headcount, Red Hat has made the decision to eliminate the position of "Fedora Program Manager" (CEO of the Fedora project) and fired Ben Cotton, who previously held this position.
And it is that with this movement one of the victims shocking wave of layoffs by Red Hat It's Ben Cotton who announced the news in a personal blog post on his last day at the company after having held this position for the past five years.
The news came as a surprise to many. and sparked a flurry of criticism of Red Hat, with many critics denouncing the company's handling of Ben Cotton as a "vulgar character". They say he deserved better treatment for his contributions to the Fedora project community.
In the position previously held by Ben Cotton, had the responsibilities of performing Fedora release planning, tracking changes during distribution development, coordinating release work (including QA and participating in steering committees), managing elections for the board of directors and technical committee (FESCo), the Fedora project management consultancy, inform the development status to the community, prioritize bug fixes, make decisions about removing inactive packages, and more.
Red Hat announced in late April that it planned to lay off about 4% of its total workforce, or about 800 employees worldwide. CEO Matt Hicks said the company will eliminate general and administrative positions, not sales or engineering positions.
In an email to staff, Hicks said the move should allow Red Hat to compete in a new environment and align resources with its strategy.
"At the heart of this decision is the need to rebalance our investments to enable Red Hat's future," he said.
The layoffs at Red Hat began this month, and the company parted ways with Fedora program manager Ben Cotton. It was surprising to learn that Red Hat had fired him as part of this cost cutting policy.
As a member of that 4%, today is my last day at Red Hat… I would be lying if I said that I have not experienced a variety of emotions in the last three weeks: confusion, anger, sadness, amusement, ”wrote in a blog post the Friday.
“But I also felt loved. I have received a lot of support from people since the news began to spread. It's like the final scene of "It's a Wonderful Life" and I'm George Bailey. I am proud of the contributions I have made to the Fedora community over the past five years, and it feels good to see others recognize it,” he continued. On community sites, Cotton's firing sparked an outpouring of criticism of Red Hat. For many, Cotton is not the type of person that Red Hat, or any other technology company, can get rid of in this way.
However, it seems that Red Hat has no intention of replacing Cotton. The Fedora Project page for the Fedora Program Manager position indicates that the Project Manager position has been phased out as of May 2023.
“The Fedora Program Manager (or FPgM) is the Director of Operations for the Fedora Project. He is employed full-time by Red Hat to manage the planning and release processes for Fedora Linux. This includes managing schedules, managing changes, and providing status reports to the community and Red Hat. The feature was retired in May 2023,” the company wrote.
It is not known why Red Hat made this decision, but some sources indicate that Red Hat could announce other decisions in the coming weeks that would not necessarily please the Fedora project community.
Source: https://funnelfiasco.com
Jumm and I am a staunch Fedorista