Bonum Certa Men Certa

What the Efforts to Remove Dr. Stallman Reveal About the Agenda of Large Corporations (Looking to Absorb the Competition, Remove Freedom, Spread Proprietary Software in 'Open' Clothing)

Related: Guix Petition Demographic Data, by Figosdev | Red Hat/IBM Got 'Tired' of RMS. Is It Getting 'Tired' of GPL/Copyleft Too?

A decorative metal
Caging us in by taking down our leaders



Summary: Richard Stallman's (RMS) positions and foresight are usually correct; at the moment we're losing access to key people whose leadership positions are essential for the independence of cornerstone projects

THE 'cancellation' of Dr. Stallman didn't start in 2019. It started before that, some say around the time of a certain LibrePlanet event. We wrote about that event several times months before he 'resigned' or 'stepped down' from his position at the FSF.



To better understand what's going on or what happened we must explore further back in time (than September 2019). We must consider what set the scene and the tone for 'cancellation' of principled people, typically for expressing the 'wrong' view. All that was needed was a 'trigger' event... then some distortion and 'spilling of beans' as in past stories and 'old beef' (things said like a decade earlier).

It "depends on what the real goal of the CoC is," somebody told us this morning, as "the real goal is to oust non-corporate technical leads; that blue-haired * [link/reference to Lamb's girlfriend with that description in GitHub] is just a distraction."

"To better understand what's going on or what happened we must explore further back in time (than September 2019)."Shawn wrote in response in IRC a few hours ago, "that makes sense" (he had contributed to some of GNU/GCC).

It's the "same with the hostile attitude towards GPLv3," he added. "I have been at GCC and LLVM conferences (both before and after they got intensely corporate) and the LLVM ones are all "I can't talk about that" [...] and also NDAs are a "I'm stupid and not a political person" [...] at GCC conferences you don't get that "I can't talk about my work" attitude, which makes it much healthier."

I told him that may change or has already changed, citing LibrePlanet with their "Safe Space" concept (where it means nothing to actual safety in practice, it's more about gagging potential critics and even an opinionated RMS himself).

"RMS was put under pressure to justify his assertion that LLVM was like a corporate plot (not his words) against GCC and -- by extension -- against GPL/copyleft."Shawn quoted, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me..."

MinceR said it "sounds like LLVM isn't really free software" and Shawn (who is good at compilers) noted that "as RMS said, it is a platform for non-free compilers and he realized GCC could go that way when Steve Jobs asked him if he could release Obj-C as binary blobs linked to GCC [...] there is a real opening right now for a good portable language for FPGAs as Verilog has many problems and because FPGAs are not the same as ASICs mainly because FPGAs perform things in lock step to the clock..."

For those who miss some context, here we have LWN outlining things as follows: "During a discussion on the GCC mailing list about the comparative performance of GCC versus Clang, Richard Stallman weighed in to argue that LLVM's permissive license makes it a "terrible setback" for the free software community, because contributions to it benefit proprietary compilers as well as free ones. The original topic was Eric S. Raymond's suggestion that GCC should allow non-free plugins—an idea which, unsurprisingly, Stallman does not find appealing. "To make GCC available for such use would be throwing in the towel. If that enables GCC to 'win', the victory would be hollow, because it would not be a victory for what really matters: users' freedom.""

"We've contacted RMS for a potential interview (not related to this topic) and hopefully we can say more some time soon."RMS was put under pressure to justify his assertion that LLVM was like a corporate plot (not his words) against GCC and -- by extension -- against GPL/copyleft.

"I have to say that RMS is right here and ESR wrong," Shawn added, "while there are cool thing that can done with a more open compiler, losing control over having a libre compiler is not worth it [...] The nonfree compilers that are now based on LLVM prove that I was right -- that the danger was real. If I had "opened" up GCC code for use in nonfree combinations, that would not have prevented a defeat; rather, it would have caused that defeat to occur very soon. [...] the whole point is that if you are going to be anti-social, the GNU project is not going to help you do that [...] The only code that helps us and not our adversaries is copylefted code. Free software released under a pushover license..."

We've contacted RMS for a potential interview (not related to this topic) and hopefully we can say more some time soon.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Brett Wilson LLP Seem to Have Had Only One Litigation Client in 2025, He Was Previously Charged, Just Like the Serial Strangler From Microsoft (Whom They Now Represent)
Karma is superstition, regulators are not
Project 2030 to Cover How "Project 2025"-Styled Anti-Media Zealots From America Targeted Techrights and Tux Machines
The common denominator is also their attacks on women
Brett Wilson LLP Failed to Meet Deadlines Set by Judge 7 Months Earlier, Tried to Ruin Our Holiday, Then Had the Audacity to Ask Us for Over 3,000 Pounds for Its Own Lateness
As a matter of principle we will never respond to assassin while we are on holiday
Americans Attacking British Sites Only Months After They Leave America
We find it kind of funny if not ironic that this site, originally an American site, got legal harassment only from Americans and only months after it had moved to the UK
Despite Losing Over a Quarter Million Dollars a Year Software in the Public Interest (SPI) Gives Helping Hand to Libreboot
SPI's financial state depends a lot on its public image or its reputation
If You Want to Know the Future, Listen to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Andy Farnell
We're sure the FSF will have plenty of its own output
 
Microsoft E.E.E.: Git Will Now (or Very Soon) Fully Depend on Rust, Which is Controlled by Microsoft
Microsoft now makes Git dependent on Rust, or making Git dependent on GitHub, which is proprietary
The Right to Punch People (Apparently)
At Brett Wilson, Brett's job title is "Head of Crime" and Wilson normalises calls for violence
Slop or Fake Articles Have Turned Linux Journal From a Pioneering/Trailblazing "Linux" Magazine Into a Nuisance
some sites with former reputation - good reputation - turn into cesspools
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 18, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, September 18, 2025
On Claims That After Bluewashing Red Hat Will Increasingly Become an Indian Company
Discussed this week (long and detailed)
Slopwatch: Google Helps Plagiarism and Sends Traffic to Ripoff Artists
That Google as a company helps spamfarms is noteworthy
Links 18/09/2025: A Taliban Ban on Internet Access and Troubled US Job Market
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/09/2025: Computer Literacy and Accessing Alhena's Database
Links for the day
Links 18/09/2025: US War on Media (Truth Banned, Cancel Culture by the Hard Right), NYT Chief Executive Warns Cheeto is Deploying ‘Anti-press Playbook'
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 17, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 17, 2025
Slopwatch: Fake Articles, Fake Text, Fake Images, Negative Slant on "Linux"
Google News has lost its value; the signal-to-noise ratio has fallen off a cliff
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Relax-and-Recover on Proxmox and New Smolweb File Transfer Service
Links for the day
Fact: EFF Got Corrupted by Corporate Money. Microsoft Lunduke (Political Noise): The Issue With EFF is, It Kills Babies.
Microsoft Lunduke - as usual - finds a way to make it about abortions
Pacing Publication Up a Bit
The news cycles have gotten rather light and slow
Links 17/09/2025: Power Outages, Digital Controls, and Attacks on the Mainstream Media (by Insecure and Corrupt Dictators)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Flashing LineageOS and ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
Links 17/09/2025: Long COVID Study, "Exposing Pegasus", and Chatbots Exposing Sensitive Data
Links for the day
Links 17/09/2025: Secret Settlement for Internet Archive and Google’s LLM Slop Summaries Attracting Lawsuits
Links for the day
The True Cost of 'Generative Models'
Funded and promoted by the companies that profit from the waste
'Big Slop' Attacks Contemporary Information/Knowledge and Creative Works, 'Big Copyright' (Cartel) Attacks the Old
Someone at IA will hopefully "blow the whistle" on what they actually agreed
Why We Find It Difficult to Trust Rust
A comparison between C/C++ and Rust
Slop Nihilism is Funded by Big Oil
Eventually human civilisation will destroy itself
Watching the OSI: Our Series Will Carry on Irrespective of the Chief's 'Resignation'
the OSI isn't even the real guardian of the term "Open Source"
Professor Eben Moglen Recovering From Open Heart Surgery
From his public pages (this is not secret)
Just What LibreOffice Needs? Another Language? (Rust)
what's all this concern about memory safety?
Many Microsoft Managers Are Leaving
"Hey hi" chaff or chaff about "hey hi" cannot eternally distract from the difficulties inside the company
There Are Red Hat (IBM) Layoffs, But Google News is Infested With Slopfarms
It contributes a lot to misinformation and it encourages plagiarism
Tomorrow, Microsoft's Tim Anderson's 'The Register MS' Offshoot Will Have Been Inactive for 2 Months (There's Also a Slop Problem)
We've already caught The Register MS using LLM slop for articles
Microsoft's Chief Legal Officer Leaves Microsoft After Nearly 30 Years
And not retiring
Even Windows Users Are Having Problems With "Secure Boot"
When it comes to security - Microsoft strives for the very opposite
Another Competition Crime of Microsoft, Long Facilitated and Advocated by a Bad Actor, Who is Funded by a Third Party to Commit Extortion Against People Who Have Correctly and Repeatedly Warned About It for Over 13 Year
We must always go back to the core issues
3 More Reasons to Replace Mozilla Firefox With LibreWolf
Thankfully there are de-enshittified versions of Firefox
USA Not a Place for Free Speech
In America, as in the US, the attacks seem more enhanced or advanced these days
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 16, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 16, 2025
Links 17/09/2025: Google Layoffs in "Hey Hi" (AI), Perplexity Hit With More "Hey Hi" (Plagiarism) Lawsuits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Reclaiming Things in a Digital Age and Moon Phases in CGI
Links for the day