01.24.21
Gemini version available ♊︎In 2020 Onwards ‘Open Source’ is Just a Marketing Ploy of Monopolies, Unlike Free Software
OSI failed and became a proponent of monopolies
Summary: More people are nowadays seeing or witnessing ‘Open Source’ for what it truly is; the term has become a misleading marketing term of proprietary software firms looking to rebrand as “ethical” (e.g. by sharing some code with other proprietary software firms, over proprietary platforms such as GitHub)
THE Freedom-respecting Software Movement (FSM, or FS/Free software, or software freedom, libre, livre or whatever one chooses to call software that respects users and developers) is growing. More people nowadays come to the realisation that ‘Open Source’ is nonsense. To many companies ‘Open Source’ just means some GitHub (proprietary software monopoly) repository with a small portion of some code in it. That’s not freedom, it’s openwashing as a marketing strategy. It’s basically a decoy.
“Let’s make 2021 the year when ‘Open Source’ got shelved in the dustbin of history, maybe in some ‘Arctic Vault’ (Microsoft monopoly PR stunt).”We’ve noticed a sizeable increase in the number of Free software developers who reject the term ‘Open Source’ and instead say “Free software”… or something to that effect (this is measurable but would take some time and effort to show empirically as much data is needed to make compelling graphs). They didn’t reject high-paying jobs and wound up hacking for a modest living (shoestring budget) just so that Microsoft can grow its monopoly and occupy the OSI. They’re not dumb enough to play along with the coup.
Our prediction, which is likely a safe one to make, is the fall of the OSI. They already lack more than one leader (vacant positions, advertised openings) and unlike the FSF they truly and utterly lack a purpose. If their intention is to boost GitHub (proprietary), then they need to rebrand, just like Linux Foundation, which already struggles a great deal because it relied heavily on conferences and they’re all called off due to COVID-19. OSI and GitHub are the next CodePlex Foundation and CodePlex.
We recently wrote a lot about the FSF and we’re encouraged to learn that its founder is still heavily involved from within (albeit not publicly listed as such). Let’s make 2021 the year when ‘Open Source’ got shelved in the dustbin of history, maybe in some ‘Arctic Vault’ (Microsoft monopoly PR stunt, designed and timed to deflect/distract from brain drain in the wake of ICE scandals). GitHub itself isn’t doing well, just as we heard several times in 2019 (people who saw the data but could not publicly divulge it). Maybe that’s why the coup has been taken up a notch (like a parasite looking for a new host). █
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