Bonum Certa Men Certa

Important Issues Not Entertained in the Community, Especially Critics of the Status Quo

Can we discuss rejecting monopolists' money?

Biden-Trump call: Don't worry, I won't reintroduce tax for rich people; Very well then; I will also carry on bombing lots of nations



Summary: There's corporate infiltration inside communities (for oligarchy hunts volunteer, unpaid labour) and those who speak about that as a threat to our cause and objectives are painted as misguided outcasts who must be ignored

THE political analogies we've recently used or borrowed aren't "off-topic" because they can certainly help demonstrate inherent similarities. The way to tackle such issues may also be similar. For instance, in American politics the concept of ending the corporate empire (imperialism for profit, at taxpayers' expense) is almost never entertained by corporate media, owned by those standing to gain from passage of wealth from the general public (growing national debt) into the offshore bank accounts of oligarchs. Wall Street regulation is also restricted -- the permissible "spectrum of debate" sense at least -- to something rather petty.

"Military-grade corporate propaganda (from companies that literally serve the military in exchange for billions of dollars of taxpayers' money) is something to keep abreast of and always bear in mind."Departing from politics, let's examine what we have in the Free software community. Some people are berated or painted as "Extremists", "Zealots", and "Radicals" (even capitalised) for insisting we ought not embrace any proprietary software. Someone tried this on me a couple of days ago after I had responded to Fedora's use of Adobe stuff (proprietary, obviously). This agenda is often shoehorned using the "moderate" and "sensible" and "reasonable" and "in the real world" Open Source pseudo 'community' (corporations disguised as a grassroots effort). Think of Microsoft, Google, IBM...

What exactly are the taboo subjects or impermissible positions in the Free software world (under siege from "Open Source")? Well, an obvious one is rejection of payments (bribes, so-called 'patronships', usually "sponsorships") from proprietary software companies. Mr. Pocock has just mentioned something to that effect (in relation to Google and Debian, FSFE etc.) and we can think of many other examples, including FOSDEM (coming soon). That money always comes with strings attached to it, whether those strings are visible or not (they can lead to subconscious self-censorship for instance).

Google, for example, paid a lot of money to the FSF and the FSFE. Not because Google supports Freedom Software and not because its agenda is to liberate users; its principal agenda is to spy and then oppress users. For evidence of this look no further than what Google will do to Chromium this coming March. Don't let some "Summer of Code" or "Outreachy" PR stunt blind the community (it's leverage for censorship of Google's critics). "Regarding Google and the FSF," Ryan told us moments ago, "Google buys your credit card purchase data from Visa, Mastercard, and Discover, and uses it to figure out how to target ads to you. To say nothing about their cooperation with the NSA..."

Ryan asked: "Is this the sort of company that the FSF should want to associate with?"

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris: Two genders mean we represent everyone, especially the rich peopleRemember that in the early days of this site, way back in 2006, in an act of self-defence we called for a complete boycott of Novell, a proprietary software company that sought software patents (eventually handed over to a Microsoft consortium). Of course we received some scorn for it, mostly from SUSE and Novell insiders, who sought to persuade people outside the company itself that I was some horrible person who must be ignored and shunned. Several people even set up entire sites just to mock us and call for a boycott of our site. What was that all for? Well, we sought to tackle the risk of the Novell/Microsoft patent collusion, designed unequivocally to facilitate a patent war on GNU/Linux at large. Ryan reminds us that "around 2006, Microsoft was openly seeding patents to troll firms and tried to put OpenGL under attack. That was thwarted by someone buying them at auction and giving them to OIN."

"It's impossible to build a general-purpose OS that doesn't contain some sort of advanced graphics API like OpenGL (or the newer Vulkan), and that was the point. Every "Linux" company needed to ship OpenGL or they would lose compatibility with everything from CAD and advanced graphics rendering software to video games, and even hardware-accelerated compositing window managers. The entire OS would effectively be ruined."

That's Microsoft. Not too long ago. It is still doing this (2019 example).

This ludicrous notion that when one speaks out against a large corporation he or she is "toxic" is obviously entertained by the "Open Source" camp, itself besieged if not directly managed by those corporations. Novell, by the way, 'only' had about 10,000 employees at the time. Some of them 'camped' in sites such as Reddit trying to bury links to my articles, in effect starving the work of any traffic/visibility.

Way, way back... or long before we even had this concept of "Cancel Culture" and before "social control media" was even a thing ("social media" and "social networks" were coined and popularised later) people tried hard to malign and slur me, making false claims about me cutting off my genitals, being beaten up by police, and all sorts of other baseless nonsense. There was a large and coordinated attempt to induce shame, guilt, and drive us all off the Web. I've lost track of the number of attacks and methods used. Recently we learned that people responsible for the coup inside the FSF (and GNU, where many IBM employees still do this) falsely claimed that we spread "conspiracy theories" and other junk. They told this to Richard Stallman himself in an effort to incite him against us and prevent him from speaking to me. Ever so classy, right?

This post wasn't supposed to be so personal, but it ended up shedding light on 15 years of a "Cancel Culture"; whether we're aware of it or not, it is a real problem. Since well before "Cancel Culture" was a 'thing' (as a concept and term) the "Open Source" people did exactly what corporations paid (or "sponsored") them to do. As Stallman put it 20 years ago, those people “treated [him] like shit” and they still do. "Stallman mentioned that it's dangerous to depend on things that you can't design around (in a post about MP3 20 years ago)," Ryan recalls, "but often by the time you need support for those things, they're already widely adopted, and it becomes a catch-22. I used to be terribly aggravated by PDFs because, before open source form-filling became possible, I'd have to treat them as static documents, print them out, and then fill out everything by hand. My handwriting is slow, awful, and frequently I would screw something up and have to print it out and start over."

Biden-Trump Town Halls: Corporate left; Corporate rightMilitary-grade corporate propaganda (from companies that literally serve the military in exchange for billions of dollars of taxpayers' money) is something to keep abreast of and always bear in mind. People who support software freedom, just like pro-equality (in the financial sense, not gender or ethnic identity politics) and antiwar politicians, will perpetually be painted as "anti-corporate" "Communists" (or even worse labels, such as "terror sympathisers" or "traitors"). If we're prepared for such propaganda, we'll be more resistant to deception and incitation efforts.

Recent Techrights' Posts

At BetaNews, "Most Commented Story" Is Not a Story But LLM Slop! (Readers Talking to Bots)
They make fake stories with provocative headlines and then boast that these get many comments
[Meme] Swiss Lawyers/Attorneys Who Fake Qualifications and Rob People
Switzerland mostly guards its reputation by censorship of media
Just How Slow Has the News Industry Become?
We're drowning in garbage from fake publishers
BetaNews is Beta-Testing the Site as LLM Slop With Microsoft Propaganda Thrown In
Many of the people there are Microsoft boosters and they use slop as "filler" (for marketing)
Gemini Links 13/11/2024: Phasing Out 3G, Brian Kernighan Books, Tcl/Tk, Time to Ditch x86
Links for the day
BetaNews, Inc. Became a Spam Operation/Web Site, LLM Spew (Slop) for SEO Disguised as "Articles"
Published 5 minutes ago by Brian Fagioli...
WordPress is for the 'Old Web'; the New Web Necessitates Static Pages
There are purely practical reasons to move away from WordPress and the likes of it
Biggest Debt Leap in Years, More Than Half a Trillion Dollars in Just One Month
We remind people (almost every year) that it's also "buynothingday"
 
More Than 3 Years After Vista 11's Release More Chinese Computer Users Still Use Vista 7 (Than "11")
it was "officially" released October 5, 2021
In Switzerland, GNU/Linux Reaches Record Highs, But What About the Corruption?
Pocock is a disappointed citizen of Switzerland
Things That Still Work OK (But We're Being Shamed for Using)
Using old stuff is nothing to be shamed of (or afraid to do)
Free Software is About Collaboration
WordPress limits it
Even the Managing Editor of BetaNews is Doing Slop and Spam
A Fish Rots From The Head Down
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 12, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 12, 2024
PERA Bill in US Senate Strives to Crush Caselaw, Making Patents on Mathematics and Algorithms 'Great Again'
Follow the money
Evolution of euthanasia & WIPO UDRP similarities exposed by W. Scott Blackmer
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 12/11/2024: A Lot of Censorship and SWNS at 50
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/11/2024: Invidious Down and YouTube Addiction
Links for the day
Links 12/11/2024: Hey Hi (AI) Failures and COP29 Fakers
Links for the day
Latest Rumours of Red Hat Layoffs
Rumours or gossip is how almost everything starts
Windows Falling to All-Time Lows and Microsoft Has Nothing to Replace It With
It's mostly Android (Linux) replacing Windows
Cybershow Has a New 81-Minute Episode on Digital Sovereignty and International Cyber-Relations
it is a high-quality show
Activism in the Digital Realm Can Never (and Must Never) Rely on GAFAM
This simply means that tech activists must completely abandon any hopes of finding allies in Google or IBM or whatever...
Golden Dawn(ald) and What GAFAM Means to Liberal Techies
In one single screenshot
IBM CEO Says Donald Trump as President-Elect is Good for IBM in New Interview With CNBC
most unprincipled CEO ever?
GNU/Linux Up to 6.1% in Finland (Almost 9% If One Counts ChromeOS Too)
Home of Linux (the kernel)
BetaNews Has Become a SPAM/Slop Factory, Brian Fagioli Publishes Fake 'Articles'
everything is now suspect in BetaNews
It's Morbid to Talk About Living People as If They're Dead
What happens to LLM slop when Brian Fagioli dies?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 11, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, November 11, 2024
Free Software and Love of Nature
It's not a coincidence that many Free software activists are also lovers of nature
Silicon Valley and GAFAM Were Never Liberal
spineless CEOs and founders aren't against Trump
Windows and 'The Desktop' Floundering
Microsoft should be extremely worried
WordPress is Bad for the Planet (Even If Many Still Use It)
the costs nobody wishes to talk about
Gemini Links 11/11/2024: Closed Systems and Verify You Are Human To Continue
Links for the day
Running Twitter at a Loss and Then Profiting From Trumpism
How very liberal of Jack Dorsey, the greedy "Liberal" who only prioritised money
Microsoft, Which Benefits From Donald Trump, is Normalising Donald Trump
Some people still wrongly believe that Microsoft is left-leaning
ChromeOS and GNU/Linux Growing in Spain (Almost 10% Now)
Whether this persists next month and next year will certainly matter
When You Upload Talks of Richard Stallman to Proprietary YouTube
Also: notice they work to abolish the word "whitelisted"
Free Software is Probably a Lot Healthier for You
Does Free software help people live longer and/or live better for longer?
Sweden: ChromeOS + GNU/Linux at 17%, an All-Time High
According to statCounter
Windows Collapsed to Only 12% of the Operating Systems Market in India, Says statCounter
Windows falls to 64% on desktops/laptops in India, dips to 12% overall
Links 11/11/2024: Mastodon Year 2 in Review, Freshworks Laying Off 13% of Staff
Links for the day
[Video] Daniel Pocock Warning About Someone Like Elon Musk Buying and Misusing Twitter Almost 7 Years Ago
Daniel Pocock spoke about Facebook and Twitter while attending the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland
[Meme] It Takes Only Words to Destroy Malicious People and Pathological Liars
Trying to silence us is foolish. Boasting about this in public is worse than foolish; it's a legal liability.
Dead Blog ('Hoisted By His Own Petard')
The saying "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" is also applicable here
Debian Voters Clearly Supportive of Richard Stallman (Founder of GNU/Linux), But Debian Leaders Keep Giving Voting Rights to Microsoft Staff
It can be seen that the pro-Stallman positions are dominant
WordPress is Unfit for Purpose in 2024
The Web itself changed a lot and the majority of Web traffic is pure junk
[Meme] Remember That Microsoft and Trump Already Have a "Targets List"
Microsoft loves Trump bailouts
Service Notice: IRC Downtimes RESOLVED
We believe we've solved this entirely (or hope so), but it may take another week to know for sure
Linux 'Not Inclusive' 6.12 (Trumpism Inside Linux Foundation Affirmed)
They can make a codename for this release: Linux 'Not Inclusive' 6.12
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is Dead. Cause of Death: Microsoft Bribes.
At the core, Linux Foundation and OSI adopted lies as a business model
Joan Meyer correctly linked Gideon Cody raid on Marion County Record to Kristallnacht
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Trans People Misused to Attack a Project or Developer Who Has Nothing to Do With Them
And why that truly hurts all trans people
Our 18+ Years of Freedom-Fighting
We always fight back
Gemini Links 11/11/2024: Men Losing Grip and "You're Relaxing Wrong"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 10, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, November 10, 2024
Nobody Knows What's in Our Fridge! Wow, Spooky!
Freedom means you can also purchase things anonymously
Freedom Must Always Be Fought For (All the Time)
Ridicule of "freedom fighters" in the digital realm is typically orchestrated by dictators or wannabes.