Bonum Certa Men Certa

Selling Ourselves Out to Proprietary Software Monopolies

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Summary: People who don't code (and never coded) are being put in charge of people who do; this is a recipe for disaster for the same reason putting politicians in charge of patent offices with scientists means profound disconnect and deviation from the real objectives

LESS than a week ago we warned about attempts to redefine "Open Source" at OSI and probably the GNOME Foundation too, basically asserting that proprietary software can be 'kinda open'. That's the sort of openwashing that the Linux Foundation was dragged into doing. In the video above I discuss this new blog post without going into the pertinent details of the post itself.



"Watch out as this is fast becoming a real threat to our freedom and it's not some accidental mishap; this is the plan."We will likely be facing similar issues in the Free software world as people who aren't suitable for particular leadership roles are being sort of 'installed' there by rich sponsors, who themselves pose a danger unless we learn to say "no" (rejection of money can be tough).

I came to help... Google!I point out that we've seen similar situations at the EPO, where non-scientists (e.g. Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos) are being put in charge of people who are a lot more qualified than them, which in turn leads to conflict, notably bullying by management as means of deterrence. They make an example of people, harassing staff and then accusing that staff of being unruly. Managers often do this to compensate for their own insecurities (no suitability for the job) and they turn 'their' institutions into temporary money-making operations by compromising or selling out, in effect selling decades' worth of reputation or code, e.g. by granting lots of fake patents (for fee collection purposes alone) or handing over lots of volunteers' code to monopolies.

Watch out as this is fast becoming a real threat to our freedom and it's not some accidental mishap; this is the plan.

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