Red Hat used to be one of the champions of FOSS. The last years, after being acquired by IBM, they bought and castrated CentOS and now restrict public access to “their” code.

Reddit used to be the healthiest commercial social network (and probably still remains in that place) but chose to severe the ability of third party developers to use their API, thus closing their ecosystem.

Many IT companies have fired staff the last year and appear to be more assertive in regard to the working conditions of their remaining employees.

I wouldn’t say that the above is an indication that the IT sector, which relies on highly educated people, keeps moving in the right direction…

I’d say that both Red Hat and Reddit maintain their position on the “ethical pedestal” but surely, these actions indicate their tension to step down in order to improve their balances. I am not an economist but it seems that they are likely to achieve short term profit (and Reddit may not achieve this either) and develop long term weaknesses.

Perhaps it’s time to stop relying on commercial entities for our activities and strengthen community projects, which will remain open for companies to contribute and thrive but will never control.

While these thoughts extend well beyond the GNU/Linux ecosystem, I cannot think of a better community to sympathise with these thoughts.

  • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    I’m sure there has been no shortage of enshitification before 2023, but for some reason now I’m seeing a lot of it. Some historian should document all of this.

    • stewie3128@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      It’s the interest rate hikes. Tech companies relied on limitless free money from VCs before, without the pressure to turn a profit. That tap’s been turned off now, so here we are.

      • theshatterstone54@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        That’s it. No more 0% interest loans. Social media companies focused on users over profit. They can’t do that anymore. And it’s likely something similar with RedHat.

      • guyman@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        What? It’s maximizing profit. Businesses are always finding new ways to cut costs while increasing revenue.