THE Linux Foundation is all about bribery, but it bears the name "Linux", so we're meant to ignore the real business model and the real purpose of this so-called 'foundation', in effect a tax-evading operation that acts as a shim between monopolies and publishers they're looking to corrupt.
"The only solution is to reject those bribes and also reject those who accept such bribes (because they become part of that very same lobbying machine -- an enabler for monopolies, albeit in sheep clothing)."This so-called 'foundation' is also a force of occupation against real communities. It's not alone. Several other institutions (SFC and OSI come to mind) followed the footsteps of this so-called 'foundation'. They take money from companies like Google and Microsoft and they help cement monopolies, and by doing so they tarnish the Linux brand/trademark. More recently we saw this brand being used to privacy-wash surveillance ("confidential computing"), whitewash patents on software, greenwash Microsoft, and openwash Google. The list of examples is seemingly endless.
Bribes don't always manifect in a 'classical' form; bribes can be favours to be later returned in some form, sometimes not even directly (e.g. job offer to a spouse or cousin). We've seen examples of that at the EPO (where Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos literally offer top jobs for unequalified spouses).
For those of us who still pursue software freedom and still value "Linux" as a brand (even if when most people mention that word they mean GNU/Linux) all this truly matters. We need to talk about it. We must speak about this openly, just like we should constantly berate the illegal practice of granting European software patents that are an attack on all software developers (not just Free/libre programs are affected). When companies like Apple, Microsoft, IBM, and Google viciously lobby to make such patents the norm (partly by bribing groups that merely claim to represent the "community" or "open source") we stand to lose in a very major way. The only solution is to reject those bribes and also reject those who accept such bribes (because they become part of that very same lobbying machine -- an enabler for monopolies, albeit in sheep clothing). ⬆
Award for UEFI. He now trolls for Google, pushing fake security (actually an attack on security) made for Intel and IBM/Red Hat, another past employer.
