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A Reader's Suggestion: Directions for Techrights



4 directions



Summary: Guest post by figosdev

OUR site's growing impact has not changed its focus. We carry on irrespective of temptations and I habitually reject invitations to interviews on TV if I distrust the channels that invite me. The site's traffic almost doubled in the past half a decade and last week I was reminded of the impact when there was another SLAPP attempt from the former CEO of Novell. I never responded to his legal representative and instead did a story on Hovsepian's crocodile tears (basically, Novell's last CEO cannot find a job). We've done a lot of Novell coverage (thousands of articles, with insiders' tips included in these). In recent years we've been focused on the EPO -- to the point where (within only months) the EPO's management surrendered and went into panic, sending several law firms to harass me. For over 4 years the Web site Techrights has been banned in the EPO (blocked) for merely transmitting accurate information about the EPO, based on insiders and people close to the EPO. No site covers EPO affairs more than Techrights. Censorship of this kind is a timely warning about the EU's "filters" agenda.

Yesterday a longtime reader sent me a 6-page document he had written about the site. It wasn't originally intended for publication/dissemination, but he has agreed to make it public as follows.




Techrights began as Boycott Novell, a website dedicated to exposing and standing against corporate corruption in software and technology. When Novell was purchased, the rebrand to Techrights found the website exploring new directions -- with a focus on bad patents.

Other themes of Techrights would include censorship, "openwashing", calling out propaganda and corporate/media lies, and companies pushing people away from free software towards bad compromises like "open core."

While the Open Source Initiative spent time cozying up to monopolies, calling out free software on being "arbitrarily" different from open source -- when it was the latter that split off from free software, and "arbitrarily" different meant the very attitude towards monopolies that free software was founded to stand against -- OSI at least spent some time talking about the problems for open-whatever in a world where Microsoft and Apple want to retain control over the user.

Now that all pretenses of being about openness or the user are dropped, the OSI-Linux-Ubuntu-whatever foundation seems more about how to get corporations to steal the free software ecosystem. And Techrights takes the advice of OSI-cofounder Bruce Perens, who resigned OSI a year later saying "It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again".

Meanwhile, the Free Software Foundation is talking about "deals with the devil", acknowledging and partially accepting for the first time in years that many users simply aren't going to go with a fully free system -- if only because hardware OEMs haven't gone in the direction of supporting free software. Instead, manufacturers have actually gone the other way towards standards designed to shut free software out (except where blessed in an "open" way by Microsoft, Red Hat, Google, etc.).

Open source has achieved every goal -- to get all the big corporations to use free software, even if they adapt it towards use by monopolies who dont want the user to be free. It has packaged and sold free software to the very foes that made the free software movement necessary in the first place. The only thing left for OSI and the Linux Foundation to do now is take people's money and do all the things that O'Reilly dreamed of, while selling out users.

Techrights is easily the #1 voice on the Internet for calling out shills and open source hypocrites, and brings you daily the sort of news that the FSF brings you on a monthly calendar. Although it speaks to open source fans, it doesn't stand for the corruption and hypocrisy. At worst, it is "Open Source done right." At best, it is a constant reminder of how much we have lost (or stand to lose) in the fight for user freedom.

Without misplaced loyalty to any organisation, only to the truth, Techrights does what the tech press seldom does: journalism. But in these modern times when people know about the Snowden leaks and still open their phones with facial recognition and actual fingerprints, while Mark Zuckerberg puts tape over his laptop camera, we have to ask if journalism alone is enough?

To be certain, journalism is always important. But with the FSF failing (or at least being undeniably set back) in their mission for half a decade without even mentioning it, one might ask if a "Be The Change" direction is one that Techrights wants to take on. When it comes to the tech press, Techrights is the change -- when ZDNet publishes its usual corporate pablum, Techrights puts things back into perspective. This by itself is very useful -- most of all to people who already care about these issues.

The corporate world is uncompromising when it wants to change something -- it lobbies for public education to tell things more exclusively from its side of the story, it buys its competitors, and it uses bogus patents to steal the work of others. We don't need to be corrupt, but we do need to be relentless in our stand against the corruption.

The biggest enemy of all is apathy and lack of awareness. Journalism can make people more aware if they listen, but it can't help them do anything if they don't know what to do, if there are no practical solutions (practicality in the sense the FSF would mean -- not being handcuffed is extremely practical) then people will go back to ignoring what they've learned about these companies. "What can we do except go back to bed?"

This is where activism and education can do more than journalism. Good journalism educates -- but then it stops there and lets the rest take over. What if no one is taking over? Perhaps the best possible journalism would find the people trying to fix these problems and highlight their efforts and ideas on a regular basis. If that means that the journalism does a bit of editorialising, so does Techrights-- probably for the better.

It's good for an organisation to be partly neutral, just to be sure they aren't becoming an unquestioning mouthpiece -- but no journalism is purely neutral, it always leans a bit towards a certain kind of story. Techrights has a bias towards the user, and that's very tolerable bias.

The main public-facing function of the FSF -- both in what it asks of users and what it achieves -- is to raise funds and create an army of free software mouthpieces. This is the area where the FSF is most lacking -- because it has certainly done a great deal (more than any other organisation) to give freedom to the user, from developing the software open source then uses to capture and sell users back to former owners like Microsoft -- to funding important software projects and offering server bandwidth to users all over the world.

By no means is propaganda the main function of the FSF. But it is the main public-facing function, because free software developers are pretty much always a smaller part of the userbase than "users," so the function FSF serves to developers is by nature less public-facing -- most of the public doesnt know anything about it. Likewise, the number of developers who make use of the FSF's infrastructure (Savannah, etc.) are even smaller. By far, the most public-facing aspect of the FSF is fundraising and training people to speak for them.

Where this is failing, in spectacular fashion -- and a threat more grave to the FSF than WSL and Snap packages -- is that they are using the mouths of their 5,000 active users while barely making use of those 5,000 minds. The FSF is a parrot training centre: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html

This may seem like a very unfair critique, but it's entirely relevant and if you look at the results, it is not so unfair, untrue or unrealistic. At worst it is a slight exaggeration, but the FSF takes itself a little too seriously (regardless of whether it earns the right or not, which really isn't the point) and expects other people to as well. A counter-argument goes "it's a bit tongue in cheek" and so far as that's true its completely alright. It becomes a problem when the actual result is 5,000 parrots -- because parrots don't think very much about what they're saying.

By comparison, Techrights has an ideologically diverse community without the typical open source antagonism towards freedom -- such as people telling you that choosing software based on the licensing is stupid or that free software is arbitrary and obtuse for the sake of it -- or Simon Phipps explaining how the problem is that Stallman is autistic. Open source promoters are the "cool kids" who go to the big parties, and "freedom" (it's really a confusing word, folks!) is a nice idea, but its not "practical."

With Open Source you can talk about everything, except how Microsoft is doing something wrong -- sort of like the mainstream media can talk about anything, but it can't show you a clip of civilians being laughed at while they're being murdered by remote control.

Maybe the elephant in the room is -- what are we actually going to do with all of this information? Because the FSF isn't even sharing it -- they're either quiet or in denial about the direction the war against free software has taken. Of course they've talked about it for longer than anyone else has -- and perhaps that's why they think nothing is really new. But those of us who just got here 10 or 15 years ago, have certainly noticed new problems -- if the FSF is silent about some of that, then not being silent should be the first thing that free software advocates do. They're trying to sound the alarm, and the FSF is almost plugging their ears.

Open source development does not have any protection from "ego-driven" destruction -- when some 'coding maniac' hijacks the development and makes the system [unnecessarily] complex ,destroying the conceptual integrity of earlier, simpler versions: http://www.softpanorama.org/Commercial_linuxes/Startup_and_shutdown/systemd.shtml

"if you write your tools in a way that is pushy and monopolistic, which causes years of problems for the ecosystem to work around-- you've advanced redix." (https://freemedia.neocities.org/redix-watch.html)

When you are already talking about these things all the time, and it isn't enough to help change the world, the next item on the agenda is to stagnate, give up or move into trying to change things. There's no amount of reporting that Techrights can do that is going to accomplish far more than it is already doing -- it's a wonderfully relentless effort. The best it could do at this point is work smarter, not harder -- perhaps "smarter" would mean helping people put their information to use.

At that point, it moves from journalism and editorialising to advocacy and education -- not education in terms of schools -- education in terms of OER and online learning.

Nor would it move to advocacy in terms of training parrots -- but advocacy in terms of providing people with information and tools to become an active part of the development of ideas to win back our freedom. The Free Software Foundation might offer you that opportunity if you write software, but that alone isn't enough anymore.

We really need to teach people how to become more journalistic -- how to become savvier users -- how to care about freedom, of course -- and how to think critically and innovatively, and assist each other in terms of fighting new threats.

Eric Raymond is the lesser co-founder of OSI (at least in terms of his help towards making the user free) but he has achieved with the bazaar his aims that thwart the cathedral of the FSF. Sure, this is apples and oranges because the cathedral tried to give more power to the user, and the bazaar has sold the user back to corporations. So perhaps Raymond's book title should have read, "The Cathedral, the Bazaar and the Wealthy Landowners."

Nonetheless, we may need a bazaar of ideas to win, because the cathedral of ideas is all tapped out.

Techrights can be a giant part of that bazaar, it can be the biggest group of tables -- not because its goal is to be the biggest, but because most of the energy in the free software movement right now is flailing around in the throws of the very effective attacks from Microsoft, Red Hat and the many different sellouts who have helped us get to this awful place in free software history. Techrights is showing less wear and tear than the FSF or OSI -- so whether or not the goal is to be large, it is the de facto state of Techrights -- a steam locomotive that has outlasted both Groklaw and any pretense of OSI to care about users.

As much as this is about what can be done with its momentum, it is about what free software can do to harness (and continue to fuel) that momentum. We are at a stage in free software where many organisations are needed, and overlap was never a problem -- overlap in organisations, as with posix in distributions, is where organisations are working together towards a common goal.

Like with distributions, different organisations work best for different people -- they have slightly different audiences or needs. With regards to the current state of war, the FSF is floundering or crawling at an inch-per-years pace, more like ReactOS in its progress than Debian.

But Techrights could help people learn to code, it could provide a beginner-friendly atmosphere to bring in users, and it could be a voice for everyone fighting systemd, keeping a watch of the undeniably corporate effort to destroy posix and replace it with things like systemd and Azure -- "But systemd didn't start as a corporate thing" (neither did WebKit or the Linux kernel.)

The free software movement doesn't have a war room anymore. It needs one. Techrights can be that war room, or it can be the next best thing. Either way, we need it -- every resistance needs a voice, and Techrights is arguably doing more in that regard, at this point in time, than any other organisation.

Recent Techrights' Posts

They Don't Tell Us that 'Digitalisation' (Now Sold as "Hey Hi") Just Means Customers Become Unpaid Staff and Are Made Accountable
People are being conditioned to associate technology with something undesirable, at times even unbearable
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Has Layoffs and Microsoft Gaming/Entertainment Division Has an Uncertain Future
it's good to see all those horrible things crashing and burning
 
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Global Warming and Global GAFAM Energy-Wasting
Burn more money (borrowed, loans), then hope the waste will somehow translate into profit?
No Compliance With the European Patent Convention (EPC) at the European Patent Office (EPO)
It's about preventing competition against this autocracy
Blue-Collar Trolls vs White-Collar Trolls
Examples of white-collar trolls
Apple Vision Pro Failed So Badly That Its Sales Are About 2,000 Times Smaller Than iPhone Sales
What's left for Apple to offer other than hype?
To Millions of People "Year of the Linux Desktop" Was Some Time in the 1990s (Bootable GNU/Linux as a Complete Operating System is Over 33 in Age)
In some sense, "year of the Linux desktop" was 33 years ago
Make No Assumptions (or Demands) About the Screen Resolution Used by Other People
There are usability aspects, aside from accessibility aspects
Why Wayland (and XWayland) Won't Solve the Key Problem It Proclaims to be Tackling (the Same Is True for Rust)
The problem isn't Wayland per se but the false promises and efforts to force everybody to move to it whilst insulting or demonising everyone who won't play along
Diplomatic Immunity Should Not Exist for Anybody
The EPO in its current form gradually 'normalises' the end of European democracy
Brett Wilson LLP Stopped Sending Me Papers When I Showed It had Sent Me Over 5 Kilograms of Legal Papers
A week ago we lodged our third lawsuit
Microsoft Mass Layoffs and Shutdowns Became the New Normal at Microsoft
Microsoft mass layoffs became a topic of everyday media coverage since May
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 21, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 21, 2025
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"Thank you for making a stand against dystopia!"
Gemini Links 22/07/2025: VPS Exploited and Fear of View
Links for the day
LLM Bots vs Techrights
Slows things down a bit
New Publication Sheds Lights on Abuse of Workers at the European Patent Office (EPO)
Put in simple terms, they're killing the Office, harming remaining staff, try to hire rubber-stampers
Links 21/07/2025: Hardware, Health, and Imperialism
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Gemini Links 21/07/2025: "When Buying Isn't Owning" and "CMS Special Edition"
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Links 21/07/2025: Indie Web and Toxic Politics
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[Meme] Microsoft Lawyers Throwing Stones in Glass Houses
threatened me with bankruptcy
Google "AI Overview" is Not AI and Not Overview
do not be misled; what Google does isn't smart, it's just ripping off the sites it already crawled for as long as 27 years
Making the Case to Dump Microsoft and GAFAM for National and Digital Sovereignty
"Sovereignty is difficult"
The Tactics of the Opposition (Microsoft Lunduke): Associate With K00ks, Throw in Vaccines to Muddy the Water
Who stands to gain from this?
Europe's Second-Largest Institution (EPO) and Largest Patent Monopoly Office Needs More Transparency, Not Less Transparency
In the EPO, what good are elections when one candidate literally bribes all the voters?
How Not to Report News About Microsoft
This pattern of misreporting is so widespread that it's hard to believe it's not intentional
Computer Science is Under Attack, They Want Everyone to be a Consumer
If people can no longer acquire Computer Science education and real Computer Science experience, they will not know how to control their own digital destiny or emancipate the very same universities that now control the syllabus and instead of teaching Computer Science encourage the outsourcing of systems
The Best Tools Are the Simplest Tools
There's a hidden message here about the merits of sticking with X
Ofcom Online Safety Group Speaks of Protecting Women Online, Will Brett Wilson LLP Ever Listen?
They've essentially became like the Taliban's "burka police"
Social Control Media Relies on Advertisers, So It'll Always Be Hostile Towards Free Software
Sales, sales, sales
Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC logs for Sunday, July 20, 2025
Fragmentation of Data
Life is too short to "hoard" data
In Defence of "Spinning Rust"
Just because something is "old" (or older) doesn't mean it ought to become extinct
Using Free Software to Prepare Legal Documents
LibreOffice is openly complaining about OOXML as an obstacle
Tech and Technology Are Not the Same Anymore
"Are you into tech, Sir?"
Our Articles About SLAPPs Receive Recognition and Interest
This week we shall continue writing about the 3 lawsuits we filed
Are You Served?
For many people, advocacy of Free software and GPL enforcement are assumed to be happening
Conspiracy or grooming? Alex Jurado, Voice of Reason compared to Outreachy
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 20/07/2025: Security Breaches and Former 'Open' 'AI' Engineer on Hype and Culture Issues
Links for the day
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Framed by social control media: Alex Belfield, Voice of Reason
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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Links for the day
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former "Linux" blogs which basically became slopfarms
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Links 20/07/2025: More GAFAM Lawsuits, Layoffs, and SLAPPs
Links for the day
Taking Stock of a Good and Productive Week
We shall now be taking a break, unpacking the new hard drive (8 TB), and making backups of everything
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PCLinuxOS is a community-driven distro
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Remember what happened to books 'sold' by Microsoft?
Microsoft Lunduke Still Fighting Cancel Culture With... Cancel Culture
There will be no "winners" in such 'debates'
The History of Daily Links and Politics
"I support Wayland, but I also support abortion..."
Ageism in Tech
Your protocol is "old"...
Microsoft is at 0% "Market Share" in Most Areas
Depending on the taxonomy chosen, there may be dozens of categories other than desktops and laptops
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Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 19, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 19, 2025