this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
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An internal memo dispatched by senior execs at Red Hat suggests the software biz is starting to push AI tooling within its Global Engineering department. RHEL may be about to get some Windows 11-style "improvements."

It carries the heading "Engineering that's evolved and amplified for the AI era," and for any AI skeptics in the developer teams at Red Hat, the tone of the email may raise alarm bells. The times are changing, it states.

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[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 4 points 6 hours ago

Ugh. Come for the systemd, stay for the slop.

[–] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 hours ago

What more would you expect of an IBM subsidiary?

[–] silverneedle@lemmy.ca 4 points 8 hours ago

That is unfortunate. I don't like everything about Redhat's products, but they do have some very useful tools.

[–] becausechemistry@piefed.social 127 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Duh, it’s run by IBM. The most brain-rotted management suite on earth. All they do is chase the cool new hotness, and unfortunately it works for them – they’re mostly selling to other brain-rotted manager types. (The end users, as usual, get hosed.)

[–] ag10n@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago

IBM like Apple has been cautious about generative AI Not to say they don’t, their Granite models work great for personal machines.

Choice is always key, embedding it in the OS is a terrible idea.

[–] HuudaHarkiten@piefed.social 22 points 1 day ago (2 children)

For some reason I thought IBM didn't exist anymore lol. What a horrible day to find out they do.

[–] homes@piefed.world 26 points 1 day ago

They exited the PC market a while back. They still make enterprise stuff.

[–] Rekall_Incorporated@piefed.social 23 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They own Red Hat and IIRC, it's their fastest growing (if not largest) business unit.

[–] nykula@piefed.social 11 points 1 day ago

It's like they don't understand the reason for this success is how different their road taken has been compared to all-in on AI companies.

[–] chortle_tortle@mander.xyz 19 points 1 day ago

It then continues to largely repeat the same point, complete with explaining the same initialism again: "We are transitioning to an Agentic Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). AI will be the operating model we run on. This is not about 'speeding up old processes'; it is about a world-class, agent-first development model fundamentally increasing the volume and quality of what we ship."

We feel obliged to note that such repetition can be a sign of text that was generated by an LLM, leading us to suspect that the authors may have used such a tool. As we reported from the CentOS Connect conference last month, we sat behind a Red Hatter doing just that in a message to an email distribution list.

While "our commitment to open source and upstream is not changing," the execs admit that "product and project development processes may diverge initially as we focus on how we build and deliver our products." Red Hat will try to "influence community development processes such that our processes can converge over time." It is possible this means the company might attempt to get external development communities to adopt similar practices – and that the authors anticipate significant resistance and even pushback from some communities.

Cooooool 😐

[–] Rekall_Incorporated@piefed.social 35 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

"Our roles: All Global Engineering roles will evolve. The focus will shift from 'AI as a tool used on occasion' to 'AI automation as a way to scale the delivery of value to customers.' Our associates' skillsets will grow as they become proficient in these tools."

The "scale the delivery of value to customer" phrase is a massive red flag, it means they have no fucking clue what they are doing. If they did, they would be more clear about their thinking and reasoning and not use PR speak.

They do provide some more specifics that are quoted later in the article, but it still sounds like they haven't really thought this through:

The next few paragraphs of the memo are oddly repetitive. First, it says: "To lead in this era, we must evolve our operating model. The gap we face today isn't just technical – it's organizational. Today, we are beginning our transition to an Agentic Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) to transform how Global Engineering and Products deliver."

"'All-in' product scope: We aren't looking for a single scrum team to experiment in a vacuum. To avoid bottlenecks, we will move entire products or sub-products to this model simultaneously." Scrum is a reference to the Agile development model, about which The Register's Rupert Goodwins expressed reservations back in 2024.

[–] arandomthought@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What's not clear about "delivering value to customers"? I think it is very specific to [product] that [company] delivers!

[–] GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

"Value" is a term so ambiguous, it's actually worse than not saying anything.

[–] crandlecan@mander.xyz 7 points 1 day ago

There's some value in your words here! 👍

[–] SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

"We will move entire products to this model simultaneously" ah yes, the All-in strategy that's very safe and prudent like in poker... And yes, the rest of the memo sounds like the usual marketing team and execs auto-fellating each other, to the dismay of everyone else.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 1 points 45 minutes ago

Well auto fellating is the trademark tone of LLM output, which the email probably is.

I bet they're just using GitHub Copilot in VS Code. Big whoop. lol

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 6 points 22 hours ago

Anyone surprised that enterprise software is doing this?

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 7 points 23 hours ago

How long until they get more hate than Canonical?

[–] IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Hopefully it's just AI tools for development they're talking about (though that will be bad enough if RHEL becomes vibecoded slop) and not stupid AI "features" baked into the OS.

[–] badgermurphy@lemmy.world 6 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I think the inverse might actually be preferable. If there's slop in the code base, that will be harder to avoid than whole modules that you can just not install.

While neither is preferable, putting it in the development is more insidious.

[–] The_Decryptor@aussie.zone 3 points 16 hours ago

If there’s slop in the code base, that will be harder to avoid than whole modules that you can just not install.

Unfortunately, that ship has sailed.