Bonum Certa Men Certa

'Open Source' as a Proprietary Software Coup and an Attack on Software Freedom

Video download link



Summary: The well-financed interests behind the coup against software freedom are at it again; seeing that Free software is everywhere and has already won many markets, they still try to rebrand and reown the entire market, but whether they succeed or not depends on our collective action

SIMMONS and co. are at it again. Working on the payroll of proprietary software giants (Google, Salesforce etc.), these people basically wage a war against software freedom and moan about ICE while in fact working for ICE and outsourcing everything to a proprietary software monopoly that also works for ICE. So we know they don't care about actual ethics; it's just a shallow case of ego tripping or typical, chronic cognitive dissonance. Those are the same people who not only try to cancel the FSF and its founder but also worked from within OSI to cancel the OSI's own co-founder (for trying to protect the OSI from such subversive entryism).



"Some say OSI isn't just fronting for Microsoft and GitHub but also for Tidelift. Some people tell us that. Then again, consider the fact that Tidelift is managed by people who signed the anti-Stallman letter, looking to destroy the FSF and by extension copyleft/GPL."The initial pointer (for this article) was sent to me by someone who had worked for Microsoft and got sick of what he saw there. He left. Tidelift is propping up Microsoft, according to him. It's also connected to the Red Hat founders (company sold to IBM, which made them a lot of money, possibly making them billionaires). Some say OSI isn't just fronting for Microsoft and GitHub but also for Tidelift. Some people tell us that. Then again, consider the fact that Tidelift is managed by people who signed the anti-Stallman letter, looking to destroy the FSF and by extension copyleft/GPL. The latest person to manage the hate letter is an IBM employee. Speaking of IBM, Simmons once again promoted this nonsense yesterday, this time in an IBM/Red Hat site called opensource.com. As it turns out, those nostalgic monopolists and OSI figureheads are boosting Microsoft moles and lobbyists (of proprietary software!). They speak of "our pals at" Microsoft (GitHub) and it's worth noticing how many Microsoft employees lead this thing. They've killed the term "Open Source". Nowadays those who claim to speak for Open Source are just proprietary software giants, along with their front groups (including the Linux Foundation, which insists that "Open Source loves Microsoft").

"Unless we speak about those issues more openly (which puts people at risk of running afoul of some so-called 'CoC'), the situation will worsen."This video begins with the more positive news about Free software winning the Web servers wars (according to statistics revealed yesterday afternoon, Microsoft's collapse in Web servers continues; down from 5.54% to 4.95% in one single mouth! Yes, that's like more than 10% in losses in just one month; they lost 7 million domains!). We covered this collapse many times over the past year or so, sometimes in long (about an hour long) videos. So the game plan or the strategy at Microsoft seems to revolve around hijacking the competition, e.g. by hiring NGINX people to become marketing drones of Microsoft (as seen in the above case).

Unless we speak about those issues more openly (which puts people at risk of running afoul of some so-called 'CoC'), the situation will worsen. They try to 'own' our revolution and then lock us out with doors and gates.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Northern Africa: GNU/Linux Measured at Around 5%
by Clownflare
SLAPP Censorship - Part 159 Out of 200: Telling Courts False Information and Spoon-feeding Them Insults, Hoping or Expecting Them to Repeat These Insults
When lawyers trick courts into repeating something false
"AGI" is Decades Old and It Never Found a Viable Business Model or Real, Actually Useful Use Cases
I keep reminding people of local firms (right here in Manchester) doing the same thing the media now calls "AGI"...
 
Gemini Links 23/08/2026: Turning 60, PineTime, and Simulation Hypothesis
Links for the day
Will Your "Modern" New Car Still be on the Road in 2060?
Are people now expected to change a car as often as they replace a mobile phone and, if so, how fast would costs add up?
The Sniff Test
Be sceptical of "CoCs"
Cloudflare Sees a Quarter of Requests in China Coming From GNU/Linux Today
Will 23% ever be the average for GNU/Linux rather than a mere peak?
You Can Lose Some Battles and Still Win the War
Winning or losing isn't something for a scoreboard
GNU/Linux Usage Measured at 23% in Russia Today
the average was almost 10%
Things Not to Fear Missing Out on
Life is too short to pay attention to social control media
Gemini Links 23/08/2026: Exercising Again, Tackling Phone Addiction, and Putting Graal Online Back Online
Links for the day
PIPs and Lawsuits: On the Future of IBM Trying to Spit Out Its Own Staff at Minimal Cost
"I'd rather be laid off than be put on a PIP"
France: GNU/Linux Averaging at 7%, Peaked at 14% Today
When will 14% be the average?
Links 23/08/2026: Water Crises, Illegal Tariffs, and Carney Confronts US Over Patent Imperialism
Links for the day
Links 23/08/2026: Slop "Children's Stories Contain Bizarre Patterns" and "Butterflies at the One Garden"
Links for the day
Microsoft is in Double Trouble in Singapore
Android+GNU/Linux+ChromeOS are near 20%
The Slop Industry Bribed the Media to Pretend It Has Something New and Revolutionary. Now It Bribes Politicians Too. Anything to Avoid Scrutiny and Regulation.
borrowed money has long been used to bribe the media
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 22, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, August 22, 2026
Microsoft to Its Workers in April-May: You're Too Old, Go Away. Microsoft in August: Young People, Go Away.
What does this company even sell anymore?
Clownflare Data US-Centric
We are assuming that for national security reasons not many sites in Chinese (or based in China) outsource their traffic to Clownflare
Gemini Links 22/08/2026: Broken Car, Devuan, and Thundermail
Links for the day
Links 22/08/2026: Prince Harry, Elton John and Others Pay High Price for Frivolous Litigation in the UK
Links for the day
'Voluntary' Mass Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
IBM does not want people to notice what truly goes on there
Another Round of GAFAM Layoffs, This Time Apple
Now Apple "is shutting down an entire Vision Pro team focused on developing gaming features for the mixed-reality headset."
Gemini Links 22/08/2026: The Bodyguard (1992), Minimalism, Backups, and IPFS
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 158 Out of 200: Making Alliances With Men Arrested for Strangling Women Was Always a Terrible Strategy
They work for American slop companies
Links 22/08/2026: TikTok Settles With Feds, Harms Caused by Social Control Media Gaining Attention
Links for the day
New Data Shows Microsoft's XBox is Really Dying
XBox is a "burning platform"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 21, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, August 21, 2026
Sources-First Publication
Thank you for keeping us on track
Ubuntu is Not Linux
I was one of the first users of Ubuntu
Links 21/08/2026: Outrage Over Politicians Who Support Slop-Feeding Data Centres, "America Is About to Get More Expensive"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/08/2026: Rain Coming Back and "Small Internet"
Links for the day
Mass Layoffs at IBM, But Mostly in Secret (PIPs and 'Voluntary' Redundancies)
Gerstner laid off a record number of people; Krishna tries to find 'innovative' new ways to cause workers to leave
Slop-ware: Nobody Knows What Code Goes Into Linux and Most Developers Cannot Understand the Rust Code (Even If They Tried)
So nobody is in charge
The Slop Pyramid Scheme (Not Boon!) Isn't Good for GNU/Linux, Even If the Plagiarism Engines (Framed as "Training" or "Intelligence") Almost Always Run GNU/Linux
We need the slop pop - we need the bubble to pop
North America: GNU/Linux Measured at 13%-15% Every Night
many (north) Americans use GNU/Linux at home and are using it to access the Web in the small hours of the morning
Links 21/08/2026: "Silicon Valley’s Billionaire Cults Are Coming for Democracy" and "Who’s Raking it in as the National Debt Explodes?"
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 157 Out of 200: What is a 'Defamation Troll'?
"Defamation Mill" also
Northern Europe Leads the Pack in Abandoning Windows After Threats Made to Greenland (Says Clownflare Data)
Clownflare has a vast trove of data, so it cannot be easily dismissed as pure nonsense
Clownflare: In Past 12 Months Microsoft Windows Fell From ~80% to ~75% on Desktops/Laptops in Asia
Microsoft is deep in debt
Secret Layoffs at Microsoft, Apparently More Sites Will Shut Down Entirely
vindicates us and serves to affirm what we've said for over a month
The State of Slopfarms About "Linux" in August 2026
The Web needs serious cleanup, which curation can help deliver
IBM Offers Workers Some Money to Fire Themselves, It's Called "Next Step" and It's Allegedly 'Extended' (Not Enough Fools Have Fired Themselves)
Will IBM executives - including the CEO - ever be held accountable?
£5 Million Unsolicited/Undisclosed Bribes and What That Means to British Politics
It still remains unknown (disclosure denied) who helps fund the £1 million lawfare against us
[Satire] Pocock, Binface & nobodies vs Farage: defamation before UK High Court
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The IBM Censorship Team, PIPs (Silent Layoffs) in IBM Europe
There seem to be many de facto layoffs going on at IBM right there
SLAPP Censorship - Part 156 Out of 200: Brett Wilson LLP Becoming Wilson FC
Now acting almost like one-person shop (lots of staff has fled this past year)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 20, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, August 20, 2026
Gemini Links 21/08/2026: "Ensmallening the BigWeb", "Rust Dependencies"
Links for the day