02.13.21
Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Marketing, Microsoft at 11:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Summary: The Raspberry Pi’s official blog spreads Microsoft lies (openwashing) and marketing propaganda, composed not by Raspberry Pi staff but Microsoft staff; this is a severe crisis of confidence, seeing what was done to the Linux Foundation and OSI (infiltration tactics appear to have paid off, undermining the core mission so as to promote proprietary software and Microsoft monopoly)
The Raspberry Pi people have lost their tongues; they’re now shilling Microsoft’s proprietary software using Microsoft lies, composed by Microsoft itself. If this is their best response after covertly installing Microsoft malware on millions of computers without asking their owners, then they’re destined to become a failure like OLPC, infiltrated by a cult. The video makes me sound louder than I intended to be. A better microphone may be used soon. █
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02.10.21
Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, Marketing at 9:14 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Summary: Why the current approach of monetary intervention (top-down) has not, in my experience, contributed to greater diversity in Free software communities
THE idea that money will solve every problem overlooks realities long suppressed by those claiming to help (for corporate Public Relations purposes rather than out of real concern). They’re attentive to way to way they seem or look to the public, not racial or gender equality.
“The CoC is a very top-down approach that mostly empowers those at the top — i.e. those who are already in positions of too much power. They seek to make it a taboo subject (too scary to even sceptically debate), using the very same instruments of control they do not wish to be questioned.”Daniel Pocock has just touched this rather sensitive subject and I’ve decided to respond or interject with my personal views, separately, in the form of a video. We previously wrote or published (sometimes on behalf of anonymous ladies) several articles about the lesser-explored aspects of Outreachy [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. My views are largely shared by my wife, who worked hard to graduate with a Computer Science degree, uses GNU/Linux (Debian with KDE), and works in the profession that she studies not because of corporate sponsorship but because of all the hard work.
People in power are still white and male. They don’t intend to let go or loosen their power any time soon, they just use “tokens”…
My personal view is that many who tutor in Outreachy are good and well-meaning people, but in order to really increase diversity we need to explore other ways. As Pocock rightly notes, the CoC isn’t the way. In my experience, it mostly fosters censorship by large corporations, not women’s participation. Misogyny is a real issue and it exists in both corporations and communities. The CoC is a very top-down approach that mostly empowers those at the top — i.e. those who are already in positions of too much power. They seek to make it a taboo subject (too scary to even sceptically debate), using the very same instruments of control they do not wish to be questioned. █
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02.09.21
Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel, Marketing, Microsoft at 7:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Photo credit: The Linux Foundation
Summary: The term “foundation” is being corrupted to the point where ‘non-profit’ (but actually for-profit) entities promote bad practices, monopolies, and openwashing of truly awful and oppressive things
THE sister site of ZDNet, TechRepublic, not only spreads Microsoft propaganda about the Raspberry Pi Foundation this week (yesterday). It employs longtime Microsoft moles and constantly spreads Microsoft propaganda and Linux Foundation propaganda, which is in turn linked to Microsoft’s. There’s just a marketing company behind it; it’s not a news site! But this rant isn’t about TechRepublic itself.
Last night I saw a worrying TechRepublic puff piece by someone whose name I never saw before, openwashing autocratic tools (‘vaccine passports’) devised by patent profiteers to blackmail people into buying their experimental prototypes (products), threatening punishment or retaliation in spite of variants/strains that make such “passports” nowhere as meaningful as actual tests (as is already done at airports). The title was “Open source ‘vaccine passports:’ Linux Foundation Public Health talks development, security, and digitally restoring trust”. My wife and I are pro-vaccination, but this infuriated both of us (myself last night and her this morning) for two reason: 1) the Linux Foundation is clearly misusing the name “Linux”. 2) those “passports” aren’t the solution and they mostly help Microsoft’s co-founder. In my wife’s view, this is another way Microsoft advances its agenda through the Linux Foundation (it has long been stated in the news that Microsoft wants to manage those “passports”) and the “contact-tracing” tools the Linux Foundation put its name behind had been outsourced to Microsoft’s proprietary software trap (GitHub). Not to even mention Gates’ stake in patents on vaccines [1, 2, 3].
“In my wife’s view, this is another way Microsoft advances its agenda through the Linux Foundation (it has long been stated in the news that Microsoft wants to manage those “passports”) and the “contact-tracing” tools the Linux Foundation put its name behind had been outsourced to Microsoft’s proprietary software trap (GitHub).”Whether you support those “passports” or not (what next? A “passport” to enter a building? A store? “Passports” for leaving one’s own apartment?), Linux as a brand has no place in “passports”. It’s bad enough that in the name of “Linux” they’re monopolising Web site trust and outsourcing both their own Web site and the project code to proprietary software of Microsoft [1, 2].
This institution has become "Stalin's dream" and people like my wife, who were only introduced to “Linux” one decade ago, already resent the brand, or at least the foundation (Torvalds’ employer).
Microsoft recently did similar things at the Raspberry Pi Foundation and since we’ve mentioned attempts to interject Rust (GitHub-controlled, not only for code) into Linux how about news from yesterday about a new thing called the Rust Foundation [1-4]? It was announced by Daniel Nazer from the EFF (where he used to combat “bad” patents such as software patents). He left the EFF to join Mozilla some 1-2 years ago and he does not mention that Microsoft is in the Board of the Rust Foundation [1]. The official announcement [4] calls Microsoft a “Founding member company,” reaffirming our suspicion about the direction of Rust.
“There are meanwhile more dodgy foundations being formed, where Microsoft sits on the board and all the code — not to mention newsletters and meeting minutes — are being outsourced entirely to Microsoft’s proprietary software monopoly.”So, in short, the “Linux” brand is now being used for privacy-violating (and pointless) contact-tracing, which we now know was grossly misused, mishandled and put in the hands of bad actors in direct violation of promises made to those choosing to participate (there were many press reports about it). That same “Linux” brand is also used for openwashing of so-called ‘vaccine passports’, painting with the “Linux” (or “ethical”) brush a threat to a decent society, never mind if such ‘vaccine passports’ are pretty useless anyway (there’s still hardly any data about efficacy of such vaccines).
There are meanwhile more dodgy foundations being formed, where Microsoft sits on the board and all the code — not to mention newsletters and meeting minutes — are being outsourced entirely to Microsoft’s proprietary software monopoly. You need to sign up with Microsoft to participate. Be sure to check who leads OpenJS, which is also linked to OSI and the Linux Foundation. This is how full-time Microsoft employees become the bosses of Torvalds.
Maybe all those foundation will end up just as corrupt as the Gates Foundation. █
References (Rust Foundation):
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Today Mozilla is thrilled to join the Rust community in announcing the formation of the Rust Foundation. The Rust Foundation will be the home of the popular Rust programming language that began within Mozilla. Rust has long been bigger than just a Mozilla project and today’s announcement is the culmination of many years of community building and collaboration. Mozilla is pleased to be a founding Platinum Sponsor of the Rust Foundation and looks forward to working with it to help Rust continue to grow and prosper.
Rust is an open-source programming language focused on safety, speed and concurrency. It started life as a side project in Mozilla Research. Back in 2010, Graydon Hoare presented work on something he hoped would become a “slightly less annoying” programming language that could deliver better memory safety and more concurrency. Within a few years, Rust had grown into a project with an independent governance structure and contributions from inside and outside Mozilla. In 2015, the Rust project announced the first stable release, Rust 1.0.
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The newly formed Rust Foundation has announced its existence.
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Mozilla has been sponsoring the Rust programming language for more than a decade while in 2020 as part of Mozilla’s big round of layoffs most of the Rust team was let go along with dropping the Servo web engine team. Following that plans were drafted to create the Rust Foundation as an independent entity.
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Today, on behalf of the Rust Core team, I’m excited to announce the Rust Foundation, a new independent non-profit organization to steward the Rust programming language and ecosystem, with a unique focus on supporting the set of maintainers that govern and develop the project. The Rust Foundation will hold its first board meeting tomorrow, February 9th, at 4pm CT. The board of directors is composed of 5 directors from our Founding member companies, AWS, Huawei, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla, as well as 5 directors from project leadership, 2 representing the Core Team, as well as 3 project areas: Reliability, Quality, and Collaboration.
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02.07.21
Posted in Deception, Europe, Marketing, Patents at 8:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Summary: The above video got cut midway due to a software crash (rare, albeit an ongoing problem); but it talks about my experience with so-called ‘Hey Hi’… decades before it became a media/PR darling (and then a propaganda term to be misused by patent offices to grant software patents)
THE media keeps talking about ‘Hey Hi’ as if some “revolution” (or “4IR”, basically yet another buzzword) suddenly occurred a few years ago, despite hardware development slowing down in terms of computer capacity increases on a relative scale (the law called after Mr. Moore is outdated if not altogether dead, unlike him).
“There are no “AI patents”; there are just software patents.”Seeing that the media hype or the 'bubble' (akin to Clown Computing) is being misused to attack the software profession (in the patent realm and beyond) I’ve come to the conclusion that ridicule and humour are needed to stifle the propagandists.
The video got chopped and ruined. I could not salvage it. It talks about my old experiences with ‘Hey Hi’ before any of us called it that (the patent maximalists moreover adopted buzzwords like "life science/s" years later, sometimes in order to sneakily push for patents on life and nature). Research I did back then revolved around what media would nowadays (but not back then) call “Hey Hi” (AI). Why should we tolerate unscientific autocrats like Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos at the EPO name-dropping these nonsensical (if not utterly meaningless) phrases to justify granting patents on just about everything conceivable? There are no “AI patents”; there are just software patents. █
Photo credit (photograph of Gordon Moore): Work by Steve Jurvetson from Menlo Park, USA – Moore Fish, CC BY 2.0.
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01.25.21
Posted in Finance, Marketing at 2:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Sometimes leveraging ethnic minorities for marketing…
Summary: With mountains of cash and a Public Relations (PR) or marketing business model the so-called ‘Linux’ Foundation became reliant on travel, lodging, booths and speeches on sale; COVID-19 is a great risk to that business model
THE Linux Foundation operated at a loss in 2018 because it had been paying out outrageous salaries, exceeding what revenue permitted. The revenue was nearly $100 million at the time and as the screenshot above shows it grew to $124,492,699 in revenue the following year (IRS filing not easy to fetch yet).
Back when we studied the latest available filing we saw this:
Here’s the bit about overspending to the point of being cashflow negative 2 years ago:
Aside from corporate bribes (even from the likes of Microsoft), the Foundation raises a lot of money from the marketing activities, which include events. But COVID-19 has pretty much grounded all that activity, which means that some people at the Foundation no longer have a job (or barely have anything to do, except maybe sign up for some Zoom account). This is really hurting the Foundation, which is why it’s turning Linux.com into a marketing/spam site of its training/certifications business. Yes, business. It was never really a non-profit…
“Given that this is the sort of thing that the Foundation increasingly does (running Windows sites and using “Macs” for reports about Linux), it would not be too devastating to lose the Foundation, only to see it replaced by something (hopefully) better.”It seems possible that many inside the Foundation will need to take a considerable paycut for 2020. The Foundation still has a mountain of money in the bank, but it cannot carry on losing money forever.
For those who haven’t paid enough attention, the Foundation does not really support Linux. It supports surveillance and openwashing; it supports whatever agenda corporations pay it to promote, even proprietary software. Yesterday Phoronix said that the Foundation has a new “mentorship” programme. If you try to apply for this mentorship you are asked to log in with one of: 1) Microsoft (GitHub) 2) Microsoft (LinkedIn) 3) Google 4) Facebook. Given that this is the sort of thing that the Foundation increasingly does (running Windows sites and using "Macs" for reports about Linux), it would not be too devastating to lose the Foundation, only to see it replaced by something (hopefully) better. █
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01.24.21
Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, Marketing, Microsoft, OSI at 8:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
OSI failed and became a proponent of monopolies
Summary: More people are nowadays seeing or witnessing ‘Open Source’ for what it truly is; the term has become a misleading marketing term of proprietary software firms looking to rebrand as “ethical” (e.g. by sharing some code with other proprietary software firms, over proprietary platforms such as GitHub)
THE Freedom-respecting Software Movement (FSM, or FS/Free software, or software freedom, libre, livre or whatever one chooses to call software that respects users and developers) is growing. More people nowadays come to the realisation that ‘Open Source’ is nonsense. To many companies ‘Open Source’ just means some GitHub (proprietary software monopoly) repository with a small portion of some code in it. That’s not freedom, it’s openwashing as a marketing strategy. It’s basically a decoy.
“Let’s make 2021 the year when ‘Open Source’ got shelved in the dustbin of history, maybe in some ‘Arctic Vault’ (Microsoft monopoly PR stunt).”We’ve noticed a sizeable increase in the number of Free software developers who reject the term ‘Open Source’ and instead say “Free software”… or something to that effect (this is measurable but would take some time and effort to show empirically as much data is needed to make compelling graphs). They didn’t reject high-paying jobs and wound up hacking for a modest living (shoestring budget) just so that Microsoft can grow its monopoly and occupy the OSI. They’re not dumb enough to play along with the coup.
Our prediction, which is likely a safe one to make, is the fall of the OSI. They already lack more than one leader (vacant positions, advertised openings) and unlike the FSF they truly and utterly lack a purpose. If their intention is to boost GitHub (proprietary), then they need to rebrand, just like Linux Foundation, which already struggles a great deal because it relied heavily on conferences and they’re all called off due to COVID-19. OSI and GitHub are the next CodePlex Foundation and CodePlex.
We recently wrote a lot about the FSF and we’re encouraged to learn that its founder is still heavily involved from within (albeit not publicly listed as such). Let’s make 2021 the year when ‘Open Source’ got shelved in the dustbin of history, maybe in some ‘Arctic Vault’ (Microsoft monopoly PR stunt, designed and timed to deflect/distract from brain drain in the wake of ICE scandals). GitHub itself isn’t doing well, just as we heard several times in 2019 (people who saw the data but could not publicly divulge it). Maybe that’s why the coup has been taken up a notch (like a parasite looking for a new host). █
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01.11.21
Posted in Deception, FUD, GNU/Linux, Marketing, Security at 7:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Summary: Another day, another shallow piece associating “Linux” with security risks based on something that has nothing to do with GNU/Linux and generally boils to nothing like a real threat (unlike Windows back doors)
THE so-called ‘tech’ media (or so-called ‘news’ sites) aren’t quite what they seem. The above is one typical example. A culmination of several recent “dark PR” campaigns against Go(Lang) and likely Monero as well as Linux have led to this ‘all-in-one’ FUD piece which we mentioned in our latest Daily Links. Looks like Trend Micro marketing. Like Infosecurity, they’re calling a whole bunch of Windows threats "Linux" and pretend that just because someone out there can write a malicious program and users can run that program (or misconfigure a system to allow remote access) it makes Go and Linux (or even Monero) dangerous. The code is hosted by Microsoft by the way. █
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01.06.21
Posted in Deception, FUD, Marketing, Microsoft, Security at 2:29 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The case of ‘info’ ‘security’
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Summary: Hours ago this article was bumped up by Google News; it’s a classic example of PR/face-saving puff pieces in ‘news’ clothing
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