Bonum Certa Men Certa

When You Realise That Your Employer Not Only Abandons Free Software But is Also Becoming Truly Dodgy (and Starts Taking Money From Bill Gates Under a Non-Disclosure Agreement)

Video download link | md5sum 8a72a6b59521aa3f57a2d3c616edc3af Sirius Became as Dodgy as It Gets Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0



Summary: A look at half a dozen posts published here yesterday, ranging from security failures to dodgy business practices and status (or several shells registered and accommodated under false pretences)

THE past few years at Sirius ‘Open Source’ were somewhat horrifying not just to me personally; we've already shown some hard evidence that colleagues suffered abuse from managers only months after a new shell in the US had bagged money from the Gates Foundation at a very mysterious time (we explained this mystery yesterday). My wife suffered similar abuse -- something which according to Tim Bray has some history when it comes to Microsoft.



"It's important to know when to leave."The video above shows some very dodgy things the company (its management) was doing and saying in recent years. The video limits itself to stuff we covered in the past 24 hours alone. Later this month we'll provide more detailed and ample evidence.

While it's totally unclear whether there's a correlation between the Gates money and the way the company was managed (denial would definitely be possible and there's an NDA) the reality of the matter is, Sirius was gradually moving away from Free software -- including infrastructure it had already had for more than a decade! In turn, the company was becoming several shells (at least 3) and at the moment everything is registered with some accountants rather than a real address of a director or an office.

This series will hopefully become a cautionary tale not just about openwashing companies (or formerly Free software companies). A lot of these things can happen and do occasionally happen in other "IT" companies. It's important to know when to leave.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Open Source Initiative (OSI) Privacy Fiasco in Detail: The OSI Does Not Respect Anybody's Privacy
The surveillance mafia that bans dissent or key people (even co-founders) with dissenting views
 
Links 31/03/2025: China Tensions, Bombs Falling in Myanmar After Earthquake
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/03/2025: Falling Out of Love With Tech, Sunsetting openSNP
Links for the day
R.T.O. at IBM in Texas and Atlanta (State of Georgia) Expected as "Soft Layoffs" Catalyst This Coming Year
It also sounds like more IBM layoffs are in the making
Law Firms Can Also Lose Their Licence for Clearly Misusing It
The bottom line is, never made the false assumption that because you can pile up SLAPPs in a docket you will not suffer from bad reputation or even get disbarred
Link between institutional abuse, Swiss jurists, Debianism and FSFE
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
LLM Slop Piggybacking News About GNU/Linux and Distorting It
new examples
Links 31/03/2025: Press and Democracy Under Further Attacks in the US, Attitudes Towards Slop Sour
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/03/2025: More X-Filesposting and Dreaming in Emacs
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 30, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, March 30, 2025
Links 30/03/2025: Security Breaches, Crackdowns on Dissent/Rival Politicians
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2025: London Soundtrack Festival, Superbloom, gmiCAPTCHA
Links for the day
Phasing Out Vista 10 in Nations Where ~90% of Windows Users Still Rely on It
Recipe for another Microsoft disaster
The Cost of Pursuing the Much-Needed Reform/Shield Against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs)
“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.”
The LLM Bubble is About to Implode, Gimmicks and Financial Shell Games Cannot Prevent That, Only Delay It
To inflate the bubble MElon is now doing the classic trick of buying from oneself for a fictional value
Links 30/03/2025: Contagious Ideas, Signal Leak, and Squashing Lousy Patents
Links for the day
Links 30/03/2025: "Quantum Randomness" and "F-1 Visa Revoked" in US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2025: US as a Threat, Returning to the WWW
Links for the day
Links 30/03/2025: Judge Blocks Dismantling Of VOA, Turkey Arrested Many Journalists
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 29, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, March 29, 2025