09.25.20
Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux at 11:34 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Not even free speech is honoured any longer (because it might ‘offend’ abusive corporations and rich sponsors with limitless avarice)
Summary: We’re losing our most basic rights amid transition to “digital”; too little is being done to push back against this worrisome trend, which necessarily means reduction in both our freedom and our fundamental human rights
THE name “Techrights” was chosen more than a decade ago (thanks, Tracy). As I recall it, RMS initially opposed it, thinking that it was missing the point of freedom, focusing instead on rights. The term “rights” typically alludes to law (something enforceable), which in turn can be connected to a system of justice. Tribunals apply law (in principle at least). The concept of freedom is broad and the word can be misused to mean deregulation (corporations taking people’s freedom away) or even bombing countries in the name of “liberating” them from alleged tyrants. Emancipation is an act of turning the oppressed into lesser oppressed or “free”, sometimes offering some “rights” in the process (to guard against future oppression).
“We have far too few rights protecting us from robotics and programmatic nihilism (the principles of human rights in relation to machines are grossly underdeveloped).”The semantics don’t matter as much as the underlying concept/s. It’s hard to find anyone who disagrees about technology becoming as harmful as it is beneficial (one frequently-explored aspect is the impact on people’s privacy, however narrow a focal point). We have far too few rights protecting us from robotics and programmatic nihilism (the principles of human rights in relation to machines are grossly underdeveloped). The media keeps using or misusing buzzwords like “hey hi” (AI) and “clown computing” (outsourcing of our data and computation to surveillance giants, usually overseas). So it’s not really helping. The media is a tool of oppression (big publishers, in the pockets of those very same surveillance giants). The word “smart” is nowadays being used to lure people into dumb practices (or shame those who refuse to play along). Hours ago I saw a puff piece promoting a wall clock which is actually an Amazon bug (listening device) and about 10 days ago I became aware of the most notorious former NSA chief joining the board of Amazon. This is the same guy who started PRISM with Microsoft almost a decade ago.
Computing won’t be improved thanks to the ‘goodwill’ of corporations, masters of openwashing and greenwashing (we have the Linux Foundation to ‘thank’ for that). The popular struggle must come from below, it will never come from above. All we can expect “from above” are orders and crushing boots. People who wrongly assume that a corporations-led OSI or corporations-funded FSF/FSFE will save us (EFF as well for that matter, albeit EFF never cared about software freedom) haven’t been paying attention to the corrupting influence of money — including Google and Microsoft money — inside key institutions. They gag critics (self-censorship and expulsions) while assuring us that they’re all becoming “open” (whilst in fact pushing lots of proprietary software) and dropping laughable soundbites like “Open Source has won” (they mean to say it was taken over, not adopted).
Times may seem depressing at some level; on the one hand, Free software (including GNU and Linux) is everywhere, but on the other hand, this isn’t how many of us envisioned it. Having a wall clock running Linux only to record us and send the recordings to Amazon (with NSA inside its Board of Directors) isn’t freedom; it’s pure, vulgar tyranny. Several years ago we already warned about the threat of Linux becoming a “cheap” (cost-free) option for some of the very worst elements of technology. Nothing in the GPL prevents that (free-as-in-deregulation), so people need to prevent that by rejecting such things and calling out the culprits. Not enough people are doing it. In an interview published less than 24 hours ago, RMS spoke about it to RT. Funnily enough, that RT interview with RMS (made public yesterday morning) asks him the very same questions we was planning to ask him next. It’s like RT ‘stole’ questions we was planning to ask RMS (questions that he answered very well). We’re joking of course. Nobody ‘stole’ anything. Whether or not he does an interview with us as well may depend on what he perceives to be the outcome, knowing that some fussy petitioners are still scheming from inside GNU to oust him. Many of them work for IBM and most of them (at least two thirds of the whole lot) develop on Microsoft servers (GitHub) — a practice long condemned and discouraged by RMS.
We’re up against powerful and well-funded forces. They’re subversive. They shoot messengers. Days ago one of these petitioners (Garrett) entered our IRC channels, obviously digging for 'dirt' on us. █
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Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Servers, Vista 10, Windows at 10:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Liberty matters; to Microsoft it's all about control/coercion
Summary: Eric Raymond (ESR) talks about Microsoft’s “embrace”; but there are many misunderstandings and misconceptions in his blog post, as we’ll explain patiently, based on known facts
THE co-founder of the OSI (an anti-Free software organisation), ESR, has just published “Last phase of the desktop wars?“
“ESR is thick-skinned, so he can certainly take the criticism.”The article is full of some strange slant/take on positivism; as if we should be happy about Microsoft, or as if Microsoft is “embracing” this thing called ‘Linux’ (GNU) with good intentions. I found myself shaking my head a lot (side to side, not top to bottom) while reading it; there are many factual errors there, which makes it hard to read without face-palming a bit. “ESR forgot to take the pink glasses off,” MinceR said in IRC and XRevan86 “stopped reading at the mention of MS Edge being ported,” he has just said. We’ve decided to respond. Of course chromium-browser already supported GNU/Linux since the very beginning, so the ‘port’ from Microsoft is a joke. It’s a PR stunt from which we have nothing to gain (GNU/Linux users won’t touch it); Microsoft used it to bombard the media with proprietary software (spyware) marketing on the same day Firefox 81 was released; guess what media paid attention to (vapourware, not an actual release of an actual FOSS browser). But we’ll get to that in a moment…
ESR is thick-skinned, so he can certainly take the criticism. Constructive hopefully…
I spoke to him before (online) and he’s responsive, albeit abrasive at times. We won’t remark on his professional or his political views (he tried to ‘cancel’ RMS more than 2 decades ago and nowadays he promotes militia nonsense); we’ll focus 100% on the substance (or lack of it). Reply in full, in-line, just like the Halloween Documents that he published with editorial interpretations. A lot of the reply below is based on an IRC debate, which is still ongoing.
Without further ado (and quite frankly with respect):
The two most intriguing developments in the recent evolution of the Microsoft Windows operating system are Windows System for Linux (WSL) and the porting of their Microsoft Edge browser to Ubuntu.
As noted above (prematurely perhaps, as that part was particularly off-putting), the core of this browser has long supported GNU/Linux (not just “Ubuntu”) and mostly because of Google and code that it had repurposed; that had nothing to do with Microsoft, which merely ‘borrowed’ other people’s work, initially removing GNU/Linux support (similar to what Microsoft did to Skype).
Regarding “Windows System for Linux” [sic], it’s a deliberate misnomer. There’s no Linux in WSL. WSL2 does have Linux, but hardly anyone uses that. It has been a devastating failure for Microsoft (their Project Manager got really stressed when we spoke about it and presented evidence) and last night we finally saw reports about Microsoft ‘fixing’ it after breaking it almost a fortnight ago. Only a crazy fool would do any serious work on WSL/WSL2.
These Microsoft ‘toys’ are widely seen as experimental laughing stocks among actual users of GNU/Linux. They’d never touch that stuff; at best, they’d run virtual machines with GNU/Linux in them (using something like VirtualBox). WSL/2 is like 2 decades behind (Cygwin).
ESR calls these “intriguing developments” (Microsoft giving up on MSIE and Edge, redoing the whole thing using someone else’s product, just like with WSL/2). The word “intriguing” can be (mis)interpreted in all sorts of ways; if by “intriguing” he meant something negative, then fine. But let’s press on with the next paragraph:
For those of you not keeping up, WSL allows unmodified Linux binaries to run under Windows 10. No emulation, no shim layer, they just load and go.
Wow. Welcome back, 2001. Cygwin. Sort of…
I experimented with Cygwin when I was still a teenager.
Microsoft… bringing you the distant past… today.
Aside from that, today’s PCs come with so much RAM that one can just run these “unmodified Linux binaries” in a virtual machine (with no noticeable performance toll).
Microsoft developers are now landing features in the Linux kernel to improve WSL.
Read as: Microsoft is taking control of the competition. It even bribed the Linux Foundation several times to keep it off-guard. It hired some kernel hackers to make sure it has key positions in development and inside the Technical Advisory Board of the Linux Foundation.
Some accomplishment, eh?
And that points in a fascinating technical direction. To understand why, we need to notice how Microsoft’s revenue stream has changed since the launch of its cloud service in 2010.
He then goes along with a likely bogus narrative. Many companies do “clown computing” these days; few are actually profitable (AWS is, as the network effect helps, along with brand recognition and lock-in). Many shut down for financial reasons. I’d know; I’ve seen that at my nighttime work (datacentre and service/product closures, forcing migration/relocation with little prior notice).
Ten years later, Azure makes Microsoft most of its money.
Stop right there!
This is what Microsoft claims. While refusing to disclose underlying figures. Microsoft whistleblowers say it operates at a loss and likely constitutes fraud (defrauding the shareholders and more).
So the same ESR who published the Halloween Documents suddenly believes what Microsoft is saying? Come on, Eric, turn back on your critical skills and assess counter-arguments with corresponding evidence.
The Windows monopoly has become a sideshow, with sales of conventional desktop PCs (the only market it dominates) declining. Accordingly, the return on investment of spending on Windows development is falling. As PC volume sales continue to fall off , it’s inevitably going to stop being a profit center and turn into a drag on the business.
Ariadne responded to this in IRC, saying that “the thought that PC sales are declining is a fallacy…”
She said “people are still using PCs…”
“Remind him of Minecraft Bedrock,” XRevan86 noted.
“I’m starting to suspect Teams is an experiment in which they’re trying to find out how long can they delay messages before people give up on Teams,” MinceR added.
Microsoft’s products and services are still rather shoddy.
Ariadne then noted that “NT is a problem though [as] writing drivers and subsystems for NT is a huge pain in the ass. It is possible that NT could be replaced down the road with a Linux kernel. That much I would believe. But POSIX? Yeah right 
[...] if you are going to make developers transition to new APIs, you would get them to transition to whatever the present state of the art is, not POSIX… I guess what I’m saying is that we could see a windows OS based on Linux kernel, in the same way that android is based on Linux kernel, but otherwise unrelated to UNIX environment… the shortcomings of NT are becoming more and more visible.”
“If something like that would occur,” XRevan86 responded, “it would definitely happen in such a way it wouldn’t make anyone happier than Microsoft.”
I agreed with MinceR when he said: “maybe they don’t care anymore, they’re just looking to do damage [...] they’ll just tell gkh [Greg K-H] to declare a stable ABI and if it stops Linux development, they don’t care…”
“Free kernel,” as XRevan86 called it, “completely useless to everyone else.”
“I suspect that is the plan anyway,” Ariadne responded.
XRevan86 recalled the “extend/extinguish” going months back: “It was funny hearing about the DirectX 12 shim for WSL as “Microsoft ported DX12 to Linux, they care!” [...] If Microsoft will port their calculator to GNU/Linux, everyone will lose it. Albeit that’s very unlikely.”
oiaohm said “it’s more interesting [to talk about] the DX12 userspace libraries from Windows being brought on top of Linux [as] there has been some talk [regarding whether] Microsoft is pondering DX12 work on the Linux DRI layer. (Mind you this could be evil profit)”
More on that in a moment (or in raw IRC logs, to be published tomorrow).
“Anyway,” XRevan86 concluded, “I think we can all agree MS Edge coming to GNU/Linux is not the Sign of Microsoft moving Windows to Linux.”
Ariadne responded with “absolutely not [as] even if Windows were to use a Linux kernel in future, they would still use their own APIs just like Android…”
“MS Edge has been available on Android all this time,” XRevan86 said.
“DX12 coming it Linux would not surprise me,” oiaohm said. “Of course it most likely will come with you have to pay fee to Microsoft.”
“That would make them less appealing than FOSS,” XRevan86 replied. “Probably not a fee. Not at first anyway.”
More in IRC logs. Let’s move to the next on to the next paragraph.
Looked at from the point of view of cold-blooded profit maximization, this means continuing Windows development is a thing Microsoft would prefer not to be doing. Instead, they’d do better putting more capital investment into Azure – which is widely rumored to be running more Linux instances than Windows these days.
At a loss. Say former insiders. There’s even a formal complaint filed with the SEC.
We’ll soon be able to publish some Microsoft leaks.
Our third ingredient is Proton. Proton is the emulation layer that allows Windows games distributed on Steam to run over Linux. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s getting close. I myself use it to play World of Warships on the Great Beast.
Nothing new. WINE has long been able to make this DRM mess run (more or less), not that it’s a favourable thing for GNU/Linux or software freedom.
The thing about games is that they are the most demanding possible stress test for a Windows emulation layer, much more so than business software. We may already be at the point where Proton-like technology is entirely good enough to run Windows business software over Linux. If not, we will be soon.
Computers get more powerful over time and old computers are discarded. The performance aspects don’t matter today (like emulation layers’ penalties or compatibility layer in WINE’s case) like they did 10 or 15 years ago. The translation toll is lessened relative to other parts of the rendering pipeline. Also, graphics cards with their drivers for Linux are rapidly improving (workloads on GPUs) and they offload all that stuff onto proprietary silicon chips. Not an ‘OS thing’…
So, you’re a Microsoft corporate strategist. What’s the profit-maximizing path forward given all these factors?
Patent blackmail. An hour ago MinceR recalled that “manufacturers already bundle a ton of Microsoft crap with their android devices…”
I told him that this is “as part of patent settlements,” recalling that as recently as last year Microsoft still sued a large OEM/manufacturer (Foxconn) over patents in relation to ChromeOS and Android (Linux). “Microsoft blackmails them into bundling,” I reminded him, “because they’re still a bunch of gangsters and if you say this, you’re racist, as Ballmer is out…”
He agreed.
How many billions of dollars per year does Microsoft make by blackmailing companies using ridiculous software patents, or settling with them by means of Microsoft bundling (and/or other business favours)?
It’s this: Microsoft Windows becomes a Proton-like emulation layer over a Linux kernel, with the layer getting thinner over time as more of the support lands in the mainline kernel sources. The economic motive is that Microsoft sheds an ever-larger fraction of its development costs as less and less has to be done in-house.
The simple reality is, Windows is becoming obsolete as more people now use Android (than Windows). But that does not mean that WSL/2 somehow becomes a basis for Windows itself. It’s just a failed experiment. Nobody uses WSL2. Almost nobody (about 150,000 people worldwide last we checked). Remember that WSL is not Linux and it doesn’t even have Linux in it. It’s Windows.
If you think this is fantasy, think again. The best evidence that it’s already the plan is that Microsoft has already ported Edge to run under Linux. There is only one way that makes any sense, and that is as a trial run for freeing the rest of the Windows utility suite from depending on any emulation layer.
Once again he goes back to this Microsoft “ported Edge to run under Linux…”
No, Edge was thrown out (except as a brand) and Microsoft took a codebase that already supported GNU/Linux.
Not much done there. ESR perpetuates Microsoft propaganda here. Or PR ploys/stunts.
“If you think this is fantasy, think again,” ESR said. XRevan86 responded with: “*thinks* nope, still pure fantasy…”
Similar to the one SJVN was spreading in the Microsoft propaganda site, ZDNet.
“What the hay is he smoking,” XRevan86 added.
MinceR thinks “he failed to recognize what happened to Linux, which is extra weird because I thought he’d at least notice the CoC issue…”
“So now Microsoft will have two consumer-oriented projects for GNU/Linux: Edge and Skype (client), both are based on Google’s cross-platform code,” XRevan86 said. “Big flipping deal.”
“You missed Teams,” oiaohm wrote. XRevan86 agreed and MinceR said it “doesn’t work properly anywhere…” (they’re mostly rebranding and pretending to ‘add’ GNU/Linux support — for the illusion of ‘growth’ or ‘market share’).
So, the end state this all points at is: New Windows is mostly a Linux kernel, there’s an old-Windows emulation over it, but Edge and the rest of the Windows user-land utilities don’t use the emulation. The emulation layer is there for games and other legacy third-party software.
Pure nonsense. WSL/2 isn’t at the core of Windows. It’s just some toy added on the side — a ‘side dish’ like Cygwin.
Economic pressure will be on Microsoft to deprecate the emulation layer. Partly because it’s entirely a cost center. Partly because they want to reduce the complexity cost of running Azure. Every increment of Windows/Linux convergence helps with that – reduces administration and the expected volume of support traffic.
Azure is a failure. We need to stop helping Microsoft’s propaganda. They keep googlebombing “Linux”, so perhaps some people are led to absorb lies. Even people who should know better.
Eventually, Microsoft announces upcoming end-of-life on the Windows emulation. The OS itself , and its userland tools, has for some time already been Linux underneath a carefully preserved old-Windows UI. Third-party software providers stop shipping Windows binaries in favor of ELF binaries with a pure Linux API…
No, they can just target proper GNU/Linux instead. Many already do.
…and Linux finally wins the desktop wars, not by displacing Windows but by co-opting it. Perhaps this is always how it had to be.
You got it the other way around, ESR. Who is co-opting who?
Ariadne said, “I do believe Microsoft are shopping for a new kernel [...] that much seems plausible [as] you have to keep in mind that Linux provides, even for Microsoft, lower capex and opex [...] than redesigning NT to scale properly to these hundreds of cores systems being sold today…”
Just because Microsoft can take advantage of the Linux kernel doesn’t mean that GNU/Linux somehow ‘wins’; unless we’re led to think that the Free software movement boils down to some kernel made in 1991 (8 years after the GNU Project) and running Office/Skype on Windows is “winning”… █
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Posted in Deception, Finance, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 2:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Days ago: We Let Them Get Away With Murder, But They Make up for It by Banning Words
Yanis Varoufakis explains corporations- and oligarchs-led ‘progress’, which sometimes boils down to mere slogans and symbolism, not substantial and meaningful reform/s. We’ve set aside parts that are less crucial to focus on what he says about symbolic change versus real change (like the cull of allegedly 'offensive' words whilst ignoring Microsoft's work with ICE and endless bombing campaigns that kill many civilians, usually "people of colour").
Summary: Activism for truly meaningful change doesn’t stop at superficialities and cosmetic changes (which merely give a false sense/impression of accomplishment, resulting in inaction); we need to regularly consider how to dismantle injustice, not based on the criteria set by oligarchs-owned media, rallying gullible mobs to appease only big egos
TIMES are increasingly tough and very much rough (as they have been for about half a year in most places). Coronavirus is eating away, devouring the economy. Many people unemployed or barely employed, children stranded at home shortly after schools reopen (where lock-downs are being reinstated — that’s more countries over time). Discontent is everywhere, sometimes resulting in riots and manifesting domestic violence.
“Where was the mass media (corporate/mainstream media) when trillions of dollars were passed mostly to rich shareholders of companies (rather than those in dire need of money)?”There are societal, economic and structural issues. With more and more people at risk of losing the roof over their head or quite literally starving (some families are going hungry already) the threshold for tolerating the status quo is reached and exceeded. There’s no sign of an imminent solution to all (or any) of this. A lot of people demand change, ranging from better access to health/food… to nutty ideas like “herd immunity” (whose advocates barely understand what it involves). Of course the virus (COVID-19 and maybe — seeing that it’s a moving target — some time soon COVID-20 or -21 etc. because it keeps mutating) won’t stop attacking, even attacking the same people over and over again, until they’re dead or until there’s mass vaccination (or until the virus is eradicated by quarantine, but it seems too late for that).
Social justice is fine. Public health is very important. Good conduct is necessary. But at the moment we’re seeing all sorts of misguided ‘movements’, whose underlying goals and motives overlook the much greater problems or misinterpret (distort, misframe, oversimplify) existing problems. Some years ago at Penn, Richard Stallman was confronted by an animal rights activist (video here) and he explained to her that there were many problems in the world and he needed to focus on particular ones he was better equipped to tackle (as a software developer). Activism is very important, but one’s goal should depend on one’s capacity and area of knowledge. It is totally understandable. Environmental preservation, for instance, is often led by biologists, veterinarians, nutritionists (looking to prevent mass extinction of species at risk) and so on. We support them financially, knowing that they understand how to accomplish their goals. To give another example, race struggle or the fight for racial equality is typically fought by the victims. When people who are themselves privileged and entitled lead this battle it understandably lead to suspicion. Can a white millionaire from Connecticut speak ‘on behalf’ of black people? Can a spoiled brat from Washington, who never in his entire lifetime experienced being anything less than super-rich (since birth), speak ‘for’ the starving children of Africa?
“If one convinces oneself that changing names of things is a high-priority goal, one aims very, very low.”As an activist myself (since my late teenage years), I more or less understand the need to focus on areas more familiar/comfortable to myself. Otherwise, there’s risk that the wrong solutions will be sought, based on the wrong assumptions and a deep misunderstanding of root causes.
Over the past few years we’ve seen more and more hypocrites, exploited/leveraged as ‘useful idiots’ by corporations and oligarchs (also propped up by their media apparatuses), looking for “social justice” by misguided methods, including trolling and dethroning powerful people whom they perceive to be the root of all evil. In practice, what they mostly accomplish is a sort of “chilling effect” (censorious society) by ‘making an example’ of high-profile people. Are we better off for this? Are hungry families better fed now? Are opportunities opening up for misfortunate people on the verge of homelessness? Have race tensions been reduced or increased (suspicion among races is rarely helped by combative elements)?
Where was the mass media (corporate/mainstream media) when trillions of dollars were passed mostly to rich shareholders of companies (rather than those in dire need of money)? Or as soon as social security programs/safety nets were cut or completely gutted (when needed the most)? Why doesn’t the media write about civilian casualties of war each and every day? Because they’re not wealthy people and therefore they’re unworthy of sympathy and aren’t of general interest? Empathetic media would pay more attention to the grief of common people all around the world, not the ‘pains’ of a break-up experienced in Beverly Hill (probably by some Hollywood celebrity whose job is choreographed fiction).
“Microsoft keeps telling us that it “loves Linux”, so we’re asked to assume the “war is over” (stop resisting!) and “Open Source has won” (in practice, taken over).”Campaigning for justice necessitates constant or at least periodic assessment (introspection perhaps) of one’s goals and means. If one convinces oneself that changing names of things is a high-priority goal, one aims very, very low. That helps appease those who gain the most from the status quo. There don’t want to see any major change, so they’ll settle on small and symbolic compromises. We’re led to think that we’re accomplishing so much while in practice we accomplish so little. In the realm of technology, for instance, we’re meant to think that having the option to share data between Facebook and Google is “progress” and having “secure” Clown Computing (where the host can still access all the data or deny access to it) is a “win” for privacy. Microsoft keeps telling us that it “loves Linux”, so we’re asked to assume the “war is over” (stop resisting!) and “Open Source has won” (in practice, taken over).
People who still (in 2020) think that co-existence with mass surveillance companies (an extension of regimes) is a step forward clearly underestimate the problem we’re in. This week, for example, PIA published “Web sites shared over 100 trillion pieces of our personal data last year” (they do this to manipulate people, not to better serve them). If we refuse to take these issues seriously and instead celebrate a change of name (default Git branch), then congratulations! We’ve been collectively fooled and we’re doomed to lose all meaningful battles. █
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