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Free Software Communities Make Red Bait (IBM), Google, Microsoft (GAFAM) and Others Obsolete, But They're Fighting Back Viciously and Mercilessly

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Summary: Companies like IBM have quit pretending to care about communities and about "Open Source" (to them, the communities of volunteers are just slaves and Microsoft is a strategic ally, just like the global empire); we need to pave a path towards freedom from monopolies -- all of them!

THE battle is on. The gloves are off. The monopolists took off their gloves. They're infiltrating the kernel via the corrupt Linux Foundation and they're trolling the community in all sorts of ways, patent trolling aside. They keep calling us names, they say we're unruly, and they try to domesticate us while they're bombing people for fun and profit. Even in recent years they still try to 'finish Hitler's job' and then they impose some Code of Censorship to silence/quell/ban dissent. Who do these C-suite millionaires think they are? How gullible do they think geeks are?

"How gullible do they think geeks are?"As we noted this morning, GNU/Linux is growing in large countries with almost half of the world's population. Not DRM and Steam stuff, let alone ChromeOS (spyware/GAFAM), but real GNU/Linux with truly free (libre) software. People got tired of social control media and software (spyware/malware) that controls the users. They want to be in control of their lives, and moreover in control of their digital devices (which they paid for).

"Leaving Red Hat is harder than leaving Novell, but it's a step in the right direction."We're seeing somewhat of a mutiny this month, and that mutiny isn't in Russia. A bunch of billionaires have deployed their "tactical nukes" in an effort to make several more billions and it is backfiring; they're calling people who use GNU/Linux without paying Red Bait (IBM) "freeloaders" (yes, it has come to that! From the people did hatchet jobs and ran campaigns of defamation against the father of GNU/Linux [1, 2], whose operating system project turns 40 in a few months).

"Much of IBM's actions appear to be maneuvering to beat Microsoft to decommodifying Linux as per the Halloween Documents," an associate of ours noted.

"Jeff Geerling's posts," the associate added, are relevant as he "also stated clearly what IBM is up to and his personal countermeasures, in three posts." (See links above; the remaining parts are [1, 2])

We say, bring it on! Go ahead and try slanderous personal attacks (we shall cover this topic in a series next month). There were also Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks which lasted two days and are hard to attribute to any one person/company.

We're meanwhile encouraging readers to say goodbye to Red Hat (Red Hat's latest statement only worsens things), however gradually. Leaving Red Hat is harder than leaving Novell, but it's a step in the right direction. Don't fall for IBM's Red Bait, it's not free and it'll get worse over time. There's no goodwill there. The mask slipped, the gloves came off, and IBM is prioritising its partnership with Microsoft over the community, whose work it long exploited for profit. To these companies, this isn't about making the world a better place, it's just about making money.

"Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it - their shareholders would revolt at anything less."

--Aaron Swartz



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