Posted in IBM, Microsoft, Patents, Red Hat at 6:13 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: IBM would send the wrong message if it laid off even a single Red Hat employee; we shall be watching closely how IBM changes (if at all) its patent policy and what kind of staff it is planning to let go (maybe the in-house lawyers, which would be a sign of progress)
THIS post is supposed to inform, not to upset. It is not a simple subject and it isn’t easy to bring it up without potentially upsetting Red Hat employees. But it doesn’t seem like anyone is willing to research and openly discuss this, so here we go.
As every Red Hat employee is aware at this moment (and has been aware for months or at least weeks), IBM plans to lay off workers. There’s no escaping the office gossip or denying that fact because IBM isn’t refuting any of the many reports about it. Just to be clear, this problem isn’t unique to IBM. Microsoft announced layoffs at least three times over the past month alone. What we won’t do is speculate. We want to know the effect, if any, on Red Hat as a business unit of IBM. Cuts would not be beneficial to GNU/Linux, unless one loathes certain technologies or activities of Red Hat (like patenting).
“As every Red Hat employee is aware at this moment (and has been aware for months or at least weeks), IBM plans to lay off workers.”It should be obvious that IBM does not need two HR departments, two marketing departments, two legal departments and so on. There’s overlap and commonality; fusion may still mean redundancies.
As per Triangle Business Journal, North Carolina (NC) is among the places where layoffs will happen (“IBM (NYSE: IBM) cutting ‘thousands’ of workers across US, including North Carolina”). Red Hat was founded there and its headquarters are there. But not only Red Hat. See articles like “IBM is cutting ‘thousands’ of jobs across the US amid COVID-19 pandemic” which say about “IBM’s presence in North Carolina” that “IBM employs more than 1,000 people at its RTP office, making it one of the largest and most important tech employers in the Triangle.”
“There’s a dismissive reference there to Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat’s CEO who became president at IBM.”So layoffs in North Carolina might have no impact on Red Hat employees. Another article in the same site (“IBM to lay off more than 1,000 employees, report says”) is consistent with this. “IBM employs thousands of people across North Carolina,” says the local press (“IBM cuts ‘thousands’ of jobs across the US, NC included”) and topics regarding layoffs at Red Hat contain no information of relevance. One person wrote anonymously: “Congratulations CEE VP’s & Directors. You’ve finally acheived [sic] your goal of top down management & ruling with fear. No more questions & input from those annoying OG RHatters. IBM assimilation will be complete with the virus layoffs that are sure to follow…”
There’s a dismissive reference there to Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat’s CEO who became president at IBM. It formally happened a couple of months ago. “You have management that shields their eyes and refuses to acknowledge that anything is different,” said a comment. “Then you have the kool aid kiddies of memo-list who will simply acquiesce with self denial.”
“If Whitehurst and the new CEO are serious about GNU/Linux, not a single Red Hat person would get the sack.”There’s a complaint about the management style. Alexandre Oliva left last year, citing issues associated with non-free software the workers were expected to use (some old reports say that IBM is imposing Slack on all staff).
In short, we lack evidence that Red Hat employees are on the ‘chopping block’; the NC-based workers whose job is at risk might be in no way associated with Red Hat. Having said that, if you are a Red Hat employee and have heard rumours or have seen something concrete about impending layoffs at Red Hat, please contact us privately. By airing concerns associated with that perhaps we can change IBM’s plan, fearing backlash before or after such a move. If Whitehurst and the new CEO are serious about GNU/Linux, not a single Red Hat person would get the sack. Red Hat is profitable; no reason for anyone to lose the job. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 5:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Robbed and stranded?
Summary: A detailed list of GNU projects (pertinent parts of the GNU Project) that redirect to other sites, especially Microsoft’s and especially after Richard Stallman (rms) was pushed out of the FSF 9 months ago
ADDED below, for completeness, are some rough notes associated with what we covered in [1, 2]. The research was done by figosdev, who wrote:
These may not be of
https://gnu.org/software/guile-dbi
https://gnu.org/software/nana (official GNU project)
https://gnu.org/software/which (official GNU project)
https://gnu.org/software/macchanger (official GNU project)
https://gnu.org/software/jwhois (official GNU project)
https://gnu.org/software/fribidi (official GNU project more than once, yet not listed)
https://gnu.org/software/httptunnel
Most of these were made two months after rms was ousted, most of them were put in by Therese Godefroy, who is very possibly just responding to tickets put in (I haven’t checked who is filing the tickets).
Redirects like these (at least ones to GitHub) do not appear to be common before that period.
[...] I would leave Matt [Lee] out of it because he only did the one, and I’m not convinced Godefroy is really party to this either. I still haven’t checked who wrote the tickets — only the fixes.
I did try to find them. I assume they exist, but it was easier to find tickets for other GNU projects. This is the WWW stuff. I have some thoughts about where to look and haven’t spent much time on that.
[...] Bison is based on GitHub (The Savannah repo is a mirror) though the Savannah URL doesn’t redirect to GitHub.
This is a notable exception, but this data may not mention every instance of GitHub hosting — it should mention every instance of redirect to GitHub from a GNU project though.
[...] This is unrelated, but I found (clicking on pages for this task) a cute parody of Row, Row, Row Your Boat written by rms in 1969:
Rho, rho, rho of X
Always equals 1
Rho is dimension, rho rho rank.
APL is fun!
www.gnu.org/software/apl
(Had to share that.)
GNU Aspell is based at least partly (actively) on GitHub (again, this is not intended as a complete list of GNU projects that are. That was already published) but there is no redirect yet. I would not put this in the article — we don’t want to encourage them to create more of those (and help them do it.)
GNU Autoconf Archive — it is possible (says the GNU page) to submit pull requests via GitHub. TSK. No automatic redirect but this is notable. I may have mentioned it previously. This is just a sidenote.
www.gnu.org/software/kopi redirects to sourceforge.net/projects/kopi — this is rare and I noted it just to do so, but Savannah is actually a fork of SourceForge, from when it was free software.
Another sidenote, check out www.gnu.org/software/polyxmass — it says “For GNU to be a coherent system, we want all GNU packages to support GTK.” The authors wanted to switch to Qt so they moved to a different project. I wasn’t aware of this policy and I wonder if it is still enforced — or it isn’t: too bad GNU didn’t feel the same way about systemd…
The GNU Radio redirects to gnuradio.org, not the GitHub. The GitHub redirects aren’t the only redirects, they’re just the most notable. They all appear to be made from after Stallman left as well. I haven’t found an exception to that yet. Mac Changer maybe (that was from before the acquisition.) I think the redirect was more recent though.
www.gnu.org/software/recutils actually has a picture of turtles fucking. I mean it’s softcore, they’re showing it from an angle where the turtle could be wearing a “sock” (that’s a filmmaking joke) but you’ve got to hand it to them (the GNU maintainers — or the turtles, whatever you like.) Given how PC things are getting lately, this is kind of priceless. Nature shows will show more I think, but if anything should have fucking (as a logo?) it’s probably systemd or GNOME. (Gnomes fucking? Um…)
GNU Websocket4J redirects to its launchpad.net page — just to make clear that GitHub isn’t the only repo being redirected to. We all consider GitHub to be special.
GNU which redirects to carlowood.github.io but we already knew about that one.
GNU cobol redirects to sourceforge.net/projects/open-cobol — this is thrown in extra, we aren’t listing all non-GitHub redirects.
jwhois redirects to GitHub but we already knew about that one.
Maybe a language warning was needed; maybe not. If people are offended by “turtles fucking” (not even a mention of genders), maybe those people need to reassess their skin’s thickness rather than soften (or Soften) everybody else. █
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, FSF, GNU/Linux at 4:09 am by Guest Editorial Team
By figosdev
Summary: “There have been several coups (or several coup stages — I’ve counted and named 5 or 6 of them) at the FSF in the past 2 years, and the largest of them is something we warned about — did anybody listen? I guess not.”
I wish rms would step away from this stupid thing. Yes, I would support rms, but never the FSF again.
Lately I’ve been teaching the history of Free Software. It’s a very relevant topic — it’s the thing that got me into Free Software in the first place.
The first free software distribution I tried was tomsrtbt. Since I learned computing in DOS, tomsrtbt made a lot of sense to me — you have a boot floppy and some basic commands, if you want something more elaborate you install a bunch of other stuff on top of it.
A lot of the details about it made less sense, but at the time I really had very little idea what was going on. I read about “Linux” in the newspaper, and being new to everything, I had to navigate the messaging (and propaganda) of various organisations to find a fit. Like many swindlers, Open Source has a very good elevator pitch: We are like Free Software, only better: More reasonable — Friendlier — Easier. We understand you.
“Seriously, I ran into Open Source types who constantly reminded me to be nice to monopolistic corporations. This is nothing happenstance — along the way Torvalds himself has compared criticism of Microsoft to “extremism” and “hate”, and more recently, Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation (who treats Torvalds like crap) has compared criticism of Microsoft to “kicking a puppy”.”Great.–So L. Ron Torvalds invented 1s and 0s, which we now call L’s and T’s, and our big mission is to get Microsoft to make Windows Open Source. I can’t wait.
Of course I’m being sarcastic, but it’s been more than a decade and I still feel like Open Source is one of the biggest bridges that was ever sold. Open Source acted like Free Software is full of sacred cows, and being “Open” is whatever I want it to be, but this is the Big Friendly Lie followed up by “Oh, you mean I can’t make fun of Microsoft anymore?”
Seriously, I ran into Open Source types who constantly reminded me to be nice to monopolistic corporations. This is nothing happenstance — along the way Torvalds himself has compared criticism of Microsoft to “extremism” and “hate”, and more recently, Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation (who treats Torvalds like crap) has compared criticism of Microsoft to “kicking a puppy”.
“Bruce Perens resigned from OSI within a year of co-founding it with Raymond, saying that it was unfair and that Open Source had overshadowed Free Software.”As far as I can tell, Microsoft has been sacred in the Open Source world for more than a decade. Yet it was the Open Source Initiative (now its co-founder Eric Raymond) who hosted the Halloween Documents. But then Microsoft claims to “Love Linux” so who knows what the Open Source people really think?
Bruce Perens resigned from OSI within a year of co-founding it with Raymond, saying that it was unfair and that Open Source had overshadowed Free Software. It obviously didn’t take long for OSI to turn into a Frankenstein. But it was my interest in computing history that led me to figure out what a sham and ploy Open Source really was. Disillusioned, I set out to support Free Software.
Free Software had a good elevator pitch too — it’s like Open Source, except it’s the real thing.
And support it I did! I switched to a fully free distro, I learned how to write scripts in Bash (until I started using Free Software, I’d coded mostly in BASIC) and Javascript and Python, I bought lots of stuff from the FSF, became a member, and learned all the pro-Free-Software arguments that Open Source loves to sidestep (but still borrows for hype now and then).
“Like when NPR says it’s “Listener-supported”, this sidesteps the reality that they’re co-opted by giant sponsors like the Gates Foundation.”This idea of borrowing ideas for hype is important, because it’s what I think the FSF is doing now. Like when NPR says it’s “Listener-supported”, this sidesteps the reality that they’re co-opted by giant sponsors like the Gates Foundation. NPR doesn’t care about its listeners. (I used to support them as well).
It’s about here that a few people put on their Linus hat and tell me this is about “hate” — I’ve got the same thing to say about that whether we are talking about OSI, NPR, the FSF or something as unredeemable as Wal-Mart: I don’t like paying people to lie to me. Bullshit should always come with a discount — it shouldn’t cost extra.
“Bullshit should always come with a discount — it shouldn’t cost extra.”The reason people hate Microsoft is they hate the abuse that Microsoft dishes out. The fact that Jim Zemlin thinks hating abuse is like kicking a puppy goes to show how sick and twisted he really is (and Linus almost certainly knows this, since Zemlin has clearly spent years abusing him).
Microsoft lies — A LOT. And people don’t like being lied to and taken advantage of. If you can fool them, they might. Microsoft spreads a lot of money around trying to fool people, and we’ve talked a lot about that.
If software is free, it won’t tie you to a bastard monopoly like Microsoft.
Now I wish that handing users over to Microsoft and calling it “Freedom” was the worst thing that the FSF did in the past year — because they’ve done far too much of that. For several years, people have complained that the FSF was handing users over to other unethical proprietary software companies, and attacking free software.
And the FSF has done what about this?
Fixed it?
Encouraged people to fight it?
Admitted there is even a problem?
No! The FSF has done:
NOTHING!!!!!
They’ve actually told users a bunch of crap.
And I wish THAT was the worst thing the FSF has done in the past few years — but it’s not.
There have been several coups (or several coup stages — I’ve counted and named 5 or 6 of them) at the FSF in the past 2 years, and the largest of them is something we warned about — did anybody listen? I guess not.
“Forget about a coup, there ought to be a revolution right about now. And I don’t hold anything against rms, this isn’t his fault. He was played. He was tricked. He was taken advantage of and lied to as much as anybody, if not more. They screwed him over regarding his entire career.”First of all, they Lied to rms. They lied a lot. And rms talks like he was the only victim. Hullo, we actually pay you people. We aren’t just random people sending email, we are also Customers. And whether or not anybody has noticed, THE FSF LIED to COUNTLESS USERS who have supported (with money and volunteering) these assholes for years and years.
They lied to everybody. And what have they done to those responsible?
I’ll give you a hint, it starts with “NOTH-”!
Forget about a coup, there ought to be a revolution right about now. And I don’t hold anything against rms, this isn’t his fault. He was played. He was tricked. He was taken advantage of and lied to as much as anybody, if not more. They screwed him over regarding his entire career.
If you want to know who I hate more than Microsoft, it’s SFC. YOU’RE SCUM, guys. SCUM. Worthless SCUM, and you also lied to everybody. You’re frauds, and I hope you have to fold — but you won’t, because you’re taking money from Google and Microsoft (enemies of copyleft) for CopyleftConf, so rather than fold you’ll simply be absorbed into the whole IBM/Microsoft thing just like the FSF. You’re a complete traitors to everything.
“You’re opportunistic and you vote against the person who gave all of you your “jobs” — unless you count Red Hat and Google.”RMS still believes he’s the head of GNU — and you know what? He should be. Without rms there would BE no GNU. And to remove him you had to have a lot of fraud and a lot of lies and people had to take advantage of those lies and fraud to make it work. You’re all scum, you’re all traitors. And when freedom really is under threat — what do you do?
You’re opportunistic and you vote against the person who gave all of you your “jobs” — unless you count Red Hat and Google.
Of course I’m not talking as much about the people who have sat idly by and said and done nothing. Sure, you’re part of the problem too, but that’s not enough to call you a traitor for. You aren’t ACTIVELY part of the problem. I’d almost thank you. And if you really don’t know, you really can’t be held accountable for that. That’s innocence. Though some of it is a bit naive.
This is an organisation that is vying for trust, but it blew it — all of it.
“You can’t talk about freedom anymore — all you’ve done is crap on it. You can’t talk about trust anymore — all you’ve done is squander it.”This is an organisation that crapped on its founder, and crapped on every decent user that ever supported it.
The FSF is a scam at this point — it wasn’t built on lies, but the “new” FSF is built on fraud and bullshit.
How are you better than IBM and Microsoft? YOU ARE IBM and Microsoft. You need to raise funds? Ask your biggest sponsor to go melt down some more gold teeth. They’re literal Nazis, and you’re in bed with them, taking their money AND doing bad things. Okay, so you’re just taking money from a corporation with one of the most inhumane histories of any company ever. Whatever, I get it.
But once you change and start doing things their way — and you have — then it’s a very big deal that you let them bribe you to do evil.
You can’t talk about freedom anymore — all you’ve done is crap on it. You can’t talk about trust anymore — all you’ve done is squander it.
You don’t deserve to be called the FSF — you’re the BSF now. Heck, you’re FBS. Everything you stand for is DONE. And it’s YOUR fault.
So I’m very sorry rms, but I refuse to support your organisation anymore. For one, it’s not your organisation anymore. It was sold off to IBM. That’s their own fault. Everyone on the board should just GTFO. You’re all bloody useless. You killed it. Piss off! There’s nothing more useless than a board that kills the organisation.
What you all let happen was shameful.
But what’s more — and this is no hyperbole (I wish it was) there’s simply no way to get back what you had. Not just trust — relevance.
From now on, you’ll be “buying” that relevance, and just like no user is free when they sign in to Facebook, no organisation is free that lets itself fail this entirely and All For A Buck. People who aren’t stupid know that non-profits can and do sell out, sure the words “non-profit” make that sound impossible, but there are countless examples to the contrary. Thanks to you, there’s now one more.
When it’s time to deny the fact that you’re all soundbites and rehashed old shit from now on:
“FSF <3 GNU/LINUX!”
You’ll get plenty of help from your good P.R. buddies, and the shills you’ve taken on as volunteers.
“You don’t care about our freedom — You certainly don’t care about rms, and you definitely don’t care about the truth.”All that matters is every donation you get is for a lie.
You don’t care about our freedom — You certainly don’t care about rms, and you definitely don’t care about the truth.
You stabbed your founder in the back — and all of your members.
You are the Former Software Foundation. And I will never, ever support your bullshit.
Nothing is going to bring the “real” FSF back, because it’s dead. You might as well try to bring back Miguel! Do you think you can?
When is the last time a 501(c)3 sold out everybody and actually turned around and went legit again? Has it ever happened?
It’s the stage in the game where everybody has to find a way to fool themselves.
Have fun with that.
I don’t think Free Software is dead, and I do think it will always matter. I hope it will come back soon. You’ll know when it does, because users will matter again. They sure as hell don’t matter to anybody right now — except themselves.
So I told rms he should start a GRASSROOTS free software organisation. He said, “how would that be different?”
“A REAL grassroots free software organisation would have thrown IBM out by now as well, recognising that nothing more toxic than a bunch of CORPORATE NAZIS has ever dragged the FSF down into illegitimacy.”Well for one, it would always have people fighting for it. It wouldn’t have shills in charge, because people like the ones running the FSF right now, would be shoved out the door.
A REAL grassroots free software organisation would have thrown IBM out by now as well, recognising that nothing more toxic than a bunch of CORPORATE NAZIS has ever dragged the FSF down into illegitimacy.
But users can’t do that, because only sponsors matter to the FSF.
Sure, they’ll lie to you and say you matter to them. They’ve been doing that for years.
And you’re welcome to listen to their crap and believe their lies. Heck, everybody I know has believed a lie or two — especially when they wanted to believe.
To paraphrase something rms used to say, “I’m sorry to tell you this, but there is no FSF”.
It’s not like OSI is better, they’re even worse. But the same thing happened to both organisations. The sooner we can stop pretending the FSF can come back from this, the better. Freedom does still matter — and users need self-advocacy. All they’ve got is a bunch of liars trying to start a coup (and a shocking number of those behind the coup are linked to the biggest sponsor).
“I’ve made several predictions — including the ousting of rms and the sale of Red Hat.”It’s not like SFC is better, they’re as bad as OSI!
FSFE is even more corrupt than the FSF is, so screw that.
I’ve made several predictions — including the ousting of rms and the sale of Red Hat. Here’s one more: wait for the FSF to betray users in a big way, AGAIN — very soon. Their true colours are showing up everywhere. All you have to do is wait.
Long live rms, long live Free Software, to hell with the BSF. They’ll never lie to you as well as Microsoft does, but they’ve gotten far too good at it to deserve your money. You shouldn’t help them lie to people, either. The gaslighting from these traitors won’t stop, they work for IBM and Microsoft now — not for rms and certainly not for users. █
Licence: Creative Commons CC0 1.0 (public domain)
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 3:35 am by Guest Editorial Team
By Thomas Grzybowski
Summary: “A large part of this “loss of integrity” is simply a lack of desire to resist competition, or even recognize the nature of the threat.”
WITHIN the conduct of human endeavors we usually think of Work in the categories of various forms of interpersonal reporting hierarchies, even if sometimes modified into something of a web. You can see these hierarchies when we discuss politics or corporate structures. Yet these paths of influence can often cross nominal boundaries, such as state or national boundaries, or corporate boundaries. Sometimes we can see the boundaries breaking down, with new inter-and-intra-community structures forming. In this flux I see the the GNU Project bleeding into Microsoft.
There are a number of empirical signs of the breakdown of boundaries between Free Software and Microsoft, such as the “Windows Subsystem for Linux”, but most insidious is the movement of GNU development processes onto the Microsoft-hosted platform, GitHub.
If one goes to the GNU Home site where they list their official packages there are some alarming observations to be made:
When you click on: https://gnu.org/software/nana/
Where you actually end up is: https://github.com/pjmaker/nana/
I find this deceptive and very concerning. For a number of important reasons, hosting GNU development on a proprietary Microsoft platform should be verboten. And for users to be programatically redirected away from the GNU site to the Microsoft site is ethically criminal, and foreboding institutional death.
Now try these other GNU projects:
https://gnu.org/software/macchanger
https://gnu.org/software/jwhois
https://gnu.org/software/fribidi
https://gnu.org/software/httptunnel
https://gnu.org/software/which/
https://gnu.org/software/guile-dbi
A sad situation. Interestingly, most of these redirections seem to have made fairly recently, not long after Richard Stallman was ousted. (see update here)
And then there are other disturbing development projects – if you take a look: GNU Bison consistently sees quite a lot of very current activity on GitHub (https://github.com/akimd/bison); and Flex, an important component of GNU Bison, is located entirely GitHub, provided under a BSD license.
https://gnu.org/software/flex/flex.html –> https://github.com/westes/flex ; https://github.com/westes/flex/blob/master/README.md .
GNU Radio, also a GNU project, goes a step further and conducts the major parts of its development cycle on GitHub. It’s not clear that they use the GNU sites for anything other than mirrors.
https://github.com/gnuradio/gnuradio/
https://github.com/gnuradio/gr-dpd/
https://github.com/gnuradio/gnuradio/pulls/
https://github.com/gnuradio/gnuradio/issues/
The growth and attraction of GitHub is based upon a number of factors, especially the social nature of the software development environment. Microsoft primes the pump for a “network effect” through the GitHub project sponsorship program:
https://help.github.com/en/github/supporting-the-open-source-community-with-github-sponsors/about-github-sponsors
Monetary grants given to projects make moving there more attractive, and the monies can be used by the project leader to make the project more attractive to developers. Because the Free and Open Source Software world is interconnected, as each particular migration or action takes place, the effects connect to the community on a global scale. As more and more developers and users become focused towards Microsoft GitHub, the resources and interfaces there become increasingly difficult to resist depending upon, and the paths or streams of community influence become too strong. The GNU Project is being swept away in a river of powerful influences.
Some folks have seen the process described above as a “loss of GNU integrity”, and it is that. But a large part of this “loss of integrity” is simply a lack of desire to resist competition, or even recognize the nature of the threat. Most importantly and most immediately the very core machinery of the Free Software Movement is being undermined and swept away by strong currents into a Microsoft-controlled domain: github.com █
Licence: Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA.
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. KDE provides a pot file to its translators and they provide translations in a po file in return. We use a custom extraction script to extract the strings to be translated from the markdown files. The translator is smart enough to ignore some changes to the strings but the changes to the links that I made would break it. It also doesn’t work well with HTML that isn’t inline. I will keep these things in mind in the future.
Content is available under CC-BY-SA