Bonum Certa Men Certa

The FSF Needs to Reject OSI (and Open Source) Along With Much-Needed Rejection of the GNOME Foundation (Not the Same as the GNOME Project)

Video download link



Summary: Response to a good little speech (unscripted apparently) by Geoffrey Knauth, who explained his position on Open Source about a year ago

THE current FSF president is a good guy. Geoffrey Knauth is a good and welcoming speaker (reminiscent of Peter T. Brown). But since his talk that I saw this morning a lot has happened in the OSI and it merits a discussion.



"Their petition backfired so badly that all they do with it right now is remove signatures."The above started as a spontaneous response to this video of Geoffrey Knauth (from last year). Here it is for context:

Video download link



“A lot of those conferences are run by women… and we really have no conflicts,” he notes. A lot of what he says makes perfect sense and I agree entirely. What Knauth says about "Open Source" (around 9:00 onwards) I may have agreed on a year ago, but a lot has changed since then. The video explains what and why... I show this blog post from the OSI and explain the situation with the GNOME Foundation, where most chiefs proceed to sellout, becoming Microsoft employees. The GNOME Foundation is extremely problematic (it has tried to cancel RMS for over a decade), but so is the OSI. And by extension the "Open Source" brand...

Berlin scenesThe problematic blog post from the OSI was the start of something; a month and a half later the OSI (with zero full-time and permanent staff; it's defunct and cannot even organise an election) took/chose a key role in attacking the person who had most stubbornly protected the mission statement, initiating this attack based on complete nonsense including distortion of some very old stances. They just waited for an opportunity to pounce and then attack the FSF, collectively. Yes, they sought collective punishment, too.

It gets worse.

Well, they (Bully de Blanc and the Interim GM of OSI, a former IBM et al stooge) have been concurrently attacking software freedom even before the 'cancel mob' was assembled with support from biased and subjective media, based on almost nothing at all (just a little announcement about a return to some board, not even leadership, which Geoffrey Knauth maintains). Their petition backfired so badly that all they do with it right now is remove signatures. Karma still works, doesn't it?

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 28/03/2026: Microsoft's LinkedIn a National Security Risk, Microsoft's Slop "Ambitions Face Investor Scrutiny Amid Soaring Costs"
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 26 Out of 200: Asking for Documents and Information You Already Have, Even Letters and E-mails That You Yourself Sent!
barristers are expensive
 
The Old Days
In the early days of this site (2006) it was mostly just a couple of people, plus comments
Gemini Links 29/03/2026: Return to Gopherspace, "Zen of Marking Playing Cards"
Links for the day
The Real XBox is Dead, So Microsoft is Calling Everything "XBox" Now
It even wanted to run a campaign to convince everybody that XBox is not actually a console
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 28, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, March 28, 2026
Open Web Destroyed by Centibillionaires, Says Anil Dash of Blogging Fame
Blogging was going through its 'prime years' about 20 years ago
"Linux" Slop Going Away, Microsoft et al Pay 'Linux' Foundation to Promote Slop
It's a timely reminder that the Linux Foundation exists to promote whoever pays the Linux Foundation, even pedophiles and companies that attack the GPL
Gemini Links 28/03/2026: "Finding My Base Tone", "Astrobotany", and BugoutBack/OFFLFIRSOCH
Links for the day
Links 28/03/2026: More Worldwide Bans on Social Control Media (Harms to Adolescents), Protests in US Against Dictatorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/03/2026: Echo Delay and 0x0.st
Links for the day
Rumours of More IBM Mass Layoffs at Beginning of April
IBM is not doing well
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 27, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, March 27, 2026
"Headcount" as Distraction From Mass Layoffs and Salary Reductions
Things aren't looking well when one considers revenue is acquired, not earned
"Linux" Slop Turning Rarer, New York Times Nowadays Contaminated With LLM Slop
Another day has passed without much slop about "linux"
Links 27/03/2026: Studying Whale Births, Apple is Cancelling Products, Cambodia Arrests Journalists Over Photographs
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/03/2026: GTD, Gopher Catchup, Gemini Crawlers, and "Slop Everywhere"
Links for the day
Mozilla Was Ruined Like Sirius Open Source Was Ruined - From the Top Down
Mozilla will never return to its Free software roots
Nokia Could Never Recover From Microsoft
It's very important to remember what really happened
Why Techrights and Many Other Sites Stopped Doing April Fools’ Day Articles
Well before slop (made by LLMs) it was "bad optics" to have satire or humour in a site, irrespective of the day of the year
President Not-Cocaine Campinos Notified of Historic EPO Strikes (Thousands of Workers Not Coming Back to the Office)
Please do pay attention to how the media treats these strikes in Europe's second-largest institution
Slides From the Presentation Discussing EPO Strikes Until End of June or Until End of 2026 (Maybe Next Year Too)
More to come soon (later today)
IBM Cuts Are Everywhere (Global), the Aim is to Lower the Pay
Because the revenues keep falling (IBM buys other companies' revenues using borrowed money)
Perpetual Strikes to Begin at European Patent Office (EPO), Large Majority Votes for Strikes Any Day of the Week
Approved industrial actions [...] Notice how none of the media or even so-called 'IP' blogs write about it
Mozilla is Not a Privacy Company, Mozilla is Run by GAFAM Executives and Managers Who Came From American Surveillance Companies
Would you trust a VPN they claim to be "free"?
SLAPP Censorship - Part 25 Out of 200: That Time Matthew J. Garrett Got Temporarily Banned/Suspended From Twitter
That he gets banned from large social control media platform is hardly surprising given his combative communications
Ubuntu Started as Free With ShipIt, Now It Becomes Payware That Exploits Debian Volunteers (Slaves)
"Ubuntu" the distro now replaces the GNU components inherited from Debian with a bunch of Microsoft GitHub (proprietary) things that reject reciprocal licences
Last Night The Register MS Published a Fake Article. It Mentioned "AI" 27 Times.
Paid-for nonsense! [...] What's left of once-respectable news sites actively harms society
Links 27/03/2026: Google Executive (GAFAM, US, Surveillance) "Named the New BBC Head", Prominent Climate Scientist Resigns From NASA
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/03/2026: "Being Busy" and "Posting Again"
Links for the day
GNOME Has No "Real" Executive Director, Only an IBM (Perma)'Interim' One With No Openings in Sight
GNOME is having financial problems
Microsoft Experiencing "Leadership Exodus"
Microsoft's current position is no better than Meta's (Facebook)
GNU/Linux Distros Should Reject "Age Verification" and Uphold Software Freedom for Users
It's not about protecting children
Slop Plunge
we can already "smell the blood" of the so-called 'AI industry'
IBM Media Puff Pieces While Layoffs Go On and On
Has the PR industry absorbed the press?
Media Says Microsoft Hiring Freezes, But There Are Already Microsoft Layoffs
They want the public to talk about Microsoft as if it's just not hiring when it is actually firing
Richard Stallman lynchings: Sruthi Chandran splitting Debian
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 26, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, March 26, 2026