Summary: With RMS (the father of the movement) betrayed from multiple angles (OSI, Linux Foundation etc.) it’s probably important to depict what’s going on, quasi-politically speaking
Summary: The world of Free software is full of politics; it’s impossible to be completely apolitical in it and just like “office politics” or “corporate politics” a lot boils down to deception, manipulation, exchange of favours (sometimes bribes) and we must talk about those things if we’re ever going to seriously tackle abuse
THE debate about so-called ‘Free Software Politics’ will be central to our upcoming articles, which will include videos and old material of relevance. Our goal is to better understand the roots and the verifiable facts, seeing that corporate media is full of marketing and revisionism. To the largest corporations that still exist and dominate the market history is a bit of an enemy, a liability, something to be distorted and buried. This is certainly true when it comes to IBM — a subject that we explored in the summer’s months. We wrote nearly 100 articles about IBM alone this past summer.
“It’s safe to say that very few sites bother covering so-called ‘Free Software Politics’. We’re proud to be one of those few sites.”Recently, in light of leaks of Debian-Private, we wrote a great deal about Debian ‘politics’; we also republished many articles about conflicts and disputes. Those served to highlight some of the hidden dangers of Codes of Conduct and anti-harassment teams; by means of selective enforcement and scapegoating they can help guard rich sponsors from critics and accountability. Some of those sponsors include Google and Microsoft. It should be noted that Google funneled a lot of money into both the FSF and FSFE (more into the latter in recent years, but the former had Google as its top sponsor for several consecutive years).
It’s often stated, perhaps correctly, that politicians are corrupt because they’re bribed by companies and therefore when/if they take office they work to pay back those “sponsors” of theirs (with their bribery campaign contributions).
Let’s be honest with ourselves; the Free software world has similar issues and we’re actually a lot cheaper to bribe buy than most things because Free software coders aren’t high earners and people in charge of institutions such as OSI can become beggars. The OSI’s co-founder now asks for donations. “From $50 a month I can buy my long-suffering wife a nice dinner and afford an occasional trip to the shooting range,” he wrote some hours ago. They sometimes say RMS (Stallman) is a bad spokesperson, as if Mr. “Open Source” ESR is any better; he’s a lot worse as he openly supports militias and vigilantes. He’s of course entitled to his political views, but he deserves condemnation or mockery/ridicule for many of these views (which themselves do not constitute an offence).
It’s safe to say that very few sites bother covering so-called ‘Free Software Politics’. We’re proud to be one of those few sites. That might not make us many friends/allies, but if our foes are the people and organisations which we criticise, then at least we know we’re effective. █
Reprinted with permission from Debian Community News
AS the Mollamby affair has emerged, some people have rushed to defend the privacy of Chris Lamb and Molly de Blanc (Mollamby) or dismissed it as mere innuendo without understanding the ethical issues.
What is the difference between innuendo and public interest? Evidence.
Privacy is a valid consideration, but it is not the only one. We delayed publishing our own commentary about the subject while weighing the privacy implications against the ethical issues.
Let’s consider some of the evidence backing up the facts about Mollamby. Parts of the evidence have been redacted for the privacy of third parties but the material presented here accurately reflects the situation.
This is the opening comment sent by a student applying for GSoC in 2018 (Fact 2):
Date: 14 March 2018 I am [redacted/student name], ... from [redacted/country]. I’m [redacted/relationship] of [redacted/full name]
The student clearly identified a conflict of interest, giving the name of the other party and the type of relationship. The other party had also sent a similar email:
Date: 12 March 2018 ... there are some students who might be interested in [redacted/project]. Even my [redacted/relationship] has been ....
As they were honest and transparent from the outset, there is no question over their integrity and no need to discuss their identities.
This is the statement one volunteer made when agreeing to be a GSoC admin in 2018:
-------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Re: Google Summer of Code 2018 Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2018 08:41:49 +0100 From: Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> To: mollydb <deblanc@riseup.net> On 22/01/18 02:25, mollydb wrote: > I mmissed this on the application before! We need 2-5 administrators for > the application. Who else wants to be one? > You can use my name temporarily while looking for other people to help you in this role. ... [redacted/name of other community] ... However, I can't officially commit to help with the duties of an administrator right now. Regards, Daniel
No volunteer is under any obligation to provide details of their personal life. This statement alone looks like it was made honestly and in good faith, that is what teamwork is all about.
A selection meeting was scheduled for 16 April 2018 and Pocock was the volunteer who reminded people about somebody having a conflict of interest (Fact 3). He was not a party to this conflict of interest. de Blanc both acknowledged and agreed with the way it was handled (Fact 6):
<pocock> yes, but [redacted] is not involved in the selection process because one candidate is [redacted] <pocock> that could be one reason we are waiting until the last minute to confirm the selections [redacted/other mentor acknowledgement] <mollydb> nice responsibile decision making :) <mollydb> thanks for being so consciencious
People had been reminded about it in a number of emails at each stage of the selection process, it wasn’t sprung on people at the last minute. de Blanc had simply left the GSoC emails to other team members:
Date: 12 July 2018 From: Molly de Blanc <deblanc@riseup.net> As an additional note, I generally check my email once a week. For anything immediate, -please- ping me on IRC as I'll be responsive there (and can know to dive into my email).
When alerts were sent about the conflict of interest in March and April, other team members were unaware that de Blanc wasn’t reading them.
Technically, it was a special case that was not strictly covered by Google’s official rules. Given the huge effort volunteers make interacting with students, nobody had made the extra effort to seek Google clarification.
Now let’s look at the complaint that Stephanie Taylor from Google sent to Debian on 13 July 2018 (yes, that was Friday the 13th):
Subject: Concerns around Debian GSoC students and conflict of interest Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2018 08:23:36 +0200 From: Stephanie Taylor <sttaylor@google.com> To: [redacted/private gmail addresses of all Debian GSoC admins] Hello Debian Org Admins, It has come to our attention that [redacted/position in Debian], [redacted/full name], is the [redacted/relationship] of [redacted/name], ... This is incredibly disturbing as the Debian folks have been valued members of the GSoC community for many years and this threatens the integrity of the program.
Taylor is complaining about conflicts of interest in Debian, this confirms Fact 7.
Who would investigate Taylor’s complaint? Chris Lamb and Molly de Blanc. Mollamby.
Subject: Re: Concerns around Debian GSoC students and conflict of interest Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2018 14:49:50 +0200 From: Molly de Blanc To: Daniel Pocock Just as a quick heads up, I'll be talking with the DPL later today to get on the same page -- I know he also contacted Stephanie off-channel. If you'd like to ping me on IRC, I can try to be online and accessible (today turned into quite a busy day for me) at a time that works for you. Cheers, Molly
Notice that de Blanc does not mention her conflict of interest (romantic relationship with the DPL, Chris Lamb) in that email. Lamb never mentioned it either. Neither of them recused themselves (Fact 8). Pocock was travelling that weekend and couldn’t make time to join a hastily organized meeting. As boyfriend and girlfriend, Lamb and de Blanc, Mollamby, had a meeting without the rest of the Debian GSoC admin team. When the boyfriend is also the leader of the project and when the girlfriend’s conduct is in question, is it any surprise that another volunteer is blamed and the girlfriend takes over the team?
That email is the smoking gun: two people at the very top of the free software ecosystem (Debian and OSI) using a volunteer as a scapegoat for a communication breakdown that one of them had been party to.
This farce is further compounded by the fact the original complaint was about conflicts of interest.
Mollamby hid their own conflict of interest while investigating a conflict of interest.
Is this a new style of disruptive leadership? Or is it simply good old fashioned cronyism?
Even this hidden conflict of interest may not be enough to justify discussing the relationship publicly. However, they have meted out severe punishments on numerous other volunteers. de Blanc even went to FOSDEM and gave a talk boasting about demoting somebody and putting volunteers behind bars. If these people want to take on leadership positions and preach about harming other volunteers they also need to accept that their own conduct will come under public scrutiny. It is clearly not possible to talk about the way they both concealed and benefitted from a conflict of interest without also making their relationship a public matter. In this situation, the ethical transgressions heavily outweigh the concerns about their privacy.
What’s more, Pocock announced his resignation from the Debian GSoC team in August 2018, if people had not behaved immaturely after that, it is unlikely any of these facts would be under public scrutiny right now.
In a non-apology email sent by the new DPL Sam Hartman, Debian confirms there were conflicts of interest and that Debian is completely unprepared for these situations:
I regret that we didn’t have better tools for dealing with conflict of interest and hope we will develop those tools going forward. ... The conflict of interest issue had no easy answer... There was not a clear conflict of interest policy. Sometimes in situations like that you don’t have good options.
The GNOME community have also done an excellent job of reducing this complicated situation into a concise query to their own leadership. From the GNOME Foundation mailing list:
Nobody appears to be asking about Molly. People are asking about you (Neil McGovern). You and Lamb both come from this Debian Cambridge grouping. You are the Executive Director. How long did you know that your new hire was also your friend Lamby's girlfriend? Please respond transparently, we would all like to see this cleaned up so there will be no discomfort or embarrassment at GUADEC.
It is interesting to see that a student applying to GSoC appears to be demonstrating more integrity than the leader of the Debian Project and the OSI board president combined. █
Conflict of interest? OSI board meeting, Spring 2018, Microsoft, San Francisco
By figosdev
Summary: Keith Bostic explains that Richard Stallman (RMS) played a role in BSD becoming free
I will often put the conclusion and point I’m making right in the title. This time, I consider the conclusion far less important than the facts behind it.
The title is tongue-in-cheek; I know rms HATES being called “The Father of Open Source” but the facts still point to this being sort of true. I wrote this to share the facts, but an article still needs a title.
“My move years ago to Free Software from Open Source was based on the former being more real and more honest than the latter.”RMS of course, is the father of Free Software. When I started out with Open Source, I found too many inconsistencies that I often summarise as “Open Source rewriting history”, which is to say it lies to people. My move years ago to Free Software from Open Source was based on the former being more real and more honest than the latter.
Credit where credit is due, for the things OSI co-founder Perens has been candid about. Eric S. Raymond (ESR) has stated his opinion on various occasions, that the position of rms in all this history was overstated — and he has frequently damned rms with faint praise.
This is part of the rhetoric of Open Source, and I find it terribly petty. They, in turn, react to people trying to set the record straight (the record they lie about) as US being petty. But the bulk of how I feel about it can nonetheless be summed up in the letter Perens wrote to the Debian community in 1999, where he says that Open Source “overshadowed” Free Software, and that this was “never fair”.
Having gradually become disgusted with Open Source, even calling it a scam on several occasions, I think we got many glimpses of the present several years ago. Today, even some people who use the term “Open Source” (thus giving OSI more power to speak, while Free Software loses notoriety for its work that OSI co-opted) are disillusioned with the Linux Foundation (LF) while I consider LF to be a perfect example of what “Open Source” has always been.
“Techrights is hosting old Debian emails that are already referring to source being “Open” in 1996, most of the “Open Source Definition” had already been written as the Debian Free Software Guidelines (by the same author), and OpenBSD forked from NetBSD in 1995 — years before “Open Source” was “coined”.”However, when I complain about “Open Source” I am complaining about the same thing Perens did in 1999 — the “Open Source” that began when Christine Peterson “coined” the term in 1998. Techrights is hosting old Debian emails that are already referring to source being “Open” in 1996, most of the “Open Source Definition” had already been written as the Debian Free Software Guidelines (by the same author), and OpenBSD forked from NetBSD in 1995 — years before “Open Source” was “coined”.
It’s no revelation to OpenBSD developers (or to pre-SCO Caldera, who used the term “Open” for two products in reference to the source being available) that Open isn’t new, but it’s news to some of the people who think Open Source (largely) started in early 1998.
Since going back to review the history of Open Source (as OSI-led) is what made me leave it behind for something more honest, I have also become increasingly curious about the pre-history of OSI-led Open Source, namely the BSD world.
I don’t as of yet put pre-OSI “Open” in the same category as the BRAND “Open Source” (or OSI), because I’m not at all certain that’s fair to do. I mean everything I’ve complained about with regards to Open Source is from 1998 onwards. So what about the rest?
Of course Perens and ESR can have the credit for OSI, and sometimes OSI has taken the credit for things Free Software did (and to be fair, Perens and Eric Raymond were certainly contributors to Free Software, even before OSI was founded. Maybe Raymond felt he never got enough credit for his contributions).
But this doesn’t answer obvious (for some) questions about who we can thank or credit for the freedom that BSD offers.
“I admire rms a great deal, but you don’t have to like him to admit when he has a point.”This is a new chapter of history in my experience, even if it’s an old one to those who were there. So the conclusions really DON’T matter as much as the facts that lead to them. Still, as I work on getting an overall picture, the exploration is fascinating. Marshall McKusick (Often referred to as Kirk McKusick) gives interesting lectures on the history of BSD, and those aren’t the only history I’ve paid attention to but they certainly help.
I was at one point directed to a quote from Keith Packard, of X11 fame:
Unfortunately, Richard Stallman, the author of the GPL and quite an interesting individual lived at 5405 DEC square, he lived up on the sixth floor I think? Had an office up there; he did not have an apartment. And we knew him extremely well. He was a challenging individual to get along with. He would regularly come down to our offices and ask us, or kind of rail at us, for not using the GPL.
This did not make a positive impression on me, this was my first interactions with Richard directly and I remember thinking at the time, “this guy is a little, you know, I’m not interested in talking to him because he’s so challenging to work with.”
And so, we should have listened to him then but we did not because, we know him too well, I guess, and met him as well.
He really was right, we need to remember that!
These are familiar sentiments for people who have paid attention to Bruce Perens over the years (both for and against rms) both publicly and in Debian-private. I admire rms a great deal, but you don’t have to like him to admit when he has a point.
I wouldn’t have written an article just to quote Keith Packard. It’s not that Packard isn’t notable, he definitely is — it’s that this quote by itself “isn’t news” enough to inspire an article about it. What I was looking for was a better understanding of the differences between BSD and rms, or BSD and the FSF. And I know there are plenty; I greatly admire the work of Theo de Raadt (which I use as I type this) but he has often railed against rms and Free Software — and I am still very sincerely interested in getting “BSD’s side of the story” on all this. I avoided OpenBSD for a long time because of the song “Home to Hypocrisy”, which lampoons rms as both a hypocrite and as being unreasonable.
“The head of FreeBSD (of their foundation?) wants to work more closely with Linux developers. I don’t think that’s going to yield any fruit, I think Linux is going to become more corporate and useless and co-opted.”At a time when Open Source has worked so hard to discredit rms, I certainly don’t feel like that’s fair. On the other hand, I really do appreciate the work de Raadt has done (I don’t think he even wrote that song) and I don’t automatically hold it against him that he and rms have had their differences about philosophy — OSI came about later. The more I read about BSD’s justifications for their way of doing things, the more tolerable I find it. Note I said tolerable — I did not say I entirely agree with it.
What I have said about this is that BSD is not (ever) going to do things the FSF way or the rms way. The head of FreeBSD (of their foundation?) wants to work more closely with Linux developers. I don’t think that’s going to yield any fruit, I think Linux is going to become more corporate and useless and co-opted. But who knows what is really meant when the head of the FreeBSD Foundation (not de Raadt, who started OpenBSD) talks about working more closely with Linux developers?
I know some of de Raadt’s feelings — because he speaks very candidly about them — regarding copylefting BSD software. He’s NOT a fan. He questions both the legality and the morality of doing so; but rather than paint this as de Raadt vs. rms, as de Raadt may (unintentionally or deliberately) do, I think of this quandary as BSD vs. Free Software. And not in the sense that it’s antagonistic, (which it sometimes is) but I’m extremely interested in both the legality and ethics (“morality”) of doing so, because I think it’s a good direction for Free Software and regardless of what my opinion is, it’s EXACTLY what is already being done.
“Yes, he is the person who coined POSIX, but BSD predates POSIX. It predates the FSF and even GNU.”I happen to support it. And although de Raadt has his objections, I’m not yet convinced that BOTH rms and say, Eben Moglen (or for that matter, emulatorman) have this wrong. I want to understand the BSD position a lot better, but that doesn’t mean I’m necessarily going to agree with de Raadt on this.
I don’t expect cooperation from BSD — I’m NOT out to convert BSD into doing anything they’ve been invited to do a thousand times. They have their way, Free Software has its way. What I support is Free Software doing (within reason and ethical limitations) what it needs to do to survive. That’s why I continue to support adding to BSD and copylefting the additions.
But my interest in understanding BSD’s position is no less sincere. They have a complaint, I do not doubt their honesty (I find BSD far more sincere than I find Open Source in general, even if very many people consider BSD to be PART of Open Source) and even if it takes years I would like to understand their position well enough that I COULD advocate it myself, IF I wanted to. That doesn’t mean I will, but it’s never been a boon for me to misunderstand the positions on either side. I want intimate knowledge of BSD’s real position — despite the obvious fact that “BSD” is far from a single entity; as much as (or even more than) with “Linux”. This “position” will certainly have facets.
But getting back to the central theme of this article, as well as back to what McKusick has said about BSD history, he credits Keith Bostic, (Not to be confused with Keith Packard) the “third” person hired to work on BSD in the early days. What does he credit Bostic with? Among other things, making the whole of BSD freely redistributable. Several people worked on that of course, once the push and then the decision was made. It’s Bostic who is credited with the pushing.
To me that’s extraordinary; I mean here you have this really wonderful OS that I feel is important to the future of Free Software (more than Linux at this point) and it’s an important part of the past and present as well. And this Bostic sounds like the rms of BSD! So what could I learn if I started there and tried to find out more?
I may find more and until then, I have a quote directly from Bostic himself. I asked him about it, after reading this FSF page: “People sometimes ask whether BSD too is a version of GNU, like GNU/Linux. The BSD developers were inspired to make their code free software by the example of the GNU Project, and explicit appeals from GNU activists helped persuade them…”
I was a bit sceptical. I really consider rms to be one of the more honest people you can find in the tech world, but I wouldn’t trust him (even based on my own personal experience) to NEVER a. overstate or understate something or b. ignore / dismiss a detail that I consider very important. I think people who disagree with him tend to overstate these, at least a bit unfairly, but though I consider rms MORE honest than most people, these are the boundaries where being sceptical is a real possibility.
So I asked Bostic himself. Originally, his reply was:
“It’s true. John Gillmore & Richard Stallman convinced me that opening up the sources was worthwhile, we wouldn’t have done that without their urging.”
He continued to spell the name that way later but I’m fairly confident he was referring to John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
This is a huge deal to me, because I’ve long noted the penchant Open Source has of painting rms has a has-been, as someone whose contributions to freedom are incidental or overstated — he is the Chief GNUsiance after all, and some people would prefer you think of him as Merely a nuisance — a busybody, an insufferable know-it-all sticking his nose into YOUR work.
“As for why it matters that RMS was part of this, as I’ve said before — the reason some people (even at the FSF, and in at least the more modern variety / chapter / establishment of Open Source) people try to downlplay Stallman’s role is so they can downplay the importance of his movement — You know, Us.”His awards and recognitions are many, though I’m more impressed by his work than his recognition. And yet in getting into this history, I honestly expected to find a very vital part of Free Software (some say “Open Source”) history that we CAN’T give rms much hand in. Yes, he is the person who coined POSIX, but BSD predates POSIX. It predates the FSF and even GNU. So surely, (I thought before asking Bostic) someone is exaggerating Stallman’s role, right? I mean, what does rms really have to do with BSD?
When I asked if I could quote him, Bostic clarified what he had already said. He said of course the collaboration between BSD and the FSF was limited (I would assume it was more limited than the collaboration with Debian, which we are learning more about these days) but there was cross-talk, and that “I’d credit John Gillmore more than Richard in our push towards Open Source, but both were there, and John was certainly working with Richard, IIRC.”
This is very cool as well. I didn’t know Gilmore or the EFF (unless there is another person and I have this wrong) had any connection to this stuff either.
I already know (from the talks McKusick gave, circa 2010/2011 at various conferences, which he probably still does) that the goal of liberating BSD came later, probably in the 80s or even the 90s after the FSF was founded. The famous lawsuit that followed also came later, which was still going on when Linus Torvalds announced Linux (Torvalds has said that if BSD hadn’t been tied up in litigation, Linux probably would have never been written. But that’s already a common quote).
As for why it matters that RMS was part of this, as I’ve said before — the reason some people (even at the FSF, and in at least the more modern variety/chapter/establishment of Open Source) people try to downlplay Stallman’s role is so they can downplay the importance of his movement — You know, Us. Attacking rms, as Techrights published well before he was ousted, is a goal as part of attacking Free Software in general. Downplaying rms downplays the importance of freedom itself. “Don’t listen to these guys, they’re spouting the same garbage Stallman says”.
Of course BSD (broadly speaking) has their own take(s) on freedom, not entirely in line with the FSF’s, or Stallman’s, and which sometimes will overlap more with the thing that “Open Source” now refers to.
“I consider history more important to the present than it is to the past. Without it, the present is missing context.”I am still interested in learning more about that. But in trying to do exactly that, I learned that rms has had influences even in ways which I would not have guessed.
The conclusion of this article is not the most substantial aspect of it, by far. I think the details and the facts are pretty interesting, in light of the things some people say. I still think Keith Bostic is a very big deal as well, and it was an honour to be able to talk to him. I would still thank him and credit him for his effort in liberating BSD — I kind of doubt Gilmore and rms would have gotten quite as far in the BSD world without Bostic as part of the interface!
But that’s a common theme in the BSD world (and the tech world, broadly speaking) as when it was up to someone at DARPA to evaluate BSD’s TCP/IP stack vs. BB&N’s, and the “neutral third party” chosen by DARPA was someone who the BSD devs had already worked with. It’s good to have advocates and people who understand your work, even when your offering is already great.
“As far as Linux, I’m a supporter of all Open Source systems… If you create a tool that people find useful and that moves us all forward, well, I’m going to support you in that!” — Keith Bostic
I consider history more important to the present than it is to the past. Without it, the present is missing context. This benefits some, but truth (and therefore justice) benefits more from context and a fair treatment of facts. I want to do both BSD, and rms (thus our movement) justice — and that means a superficial take on facts will get us less than a reasonable study of history will. I find these things interesting, but not as trivia. The “big picture” matters now as much as ever, and the details (with care) may yet get us there.
Long live rms, Long live BSD, and happy hacking. █
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Summary: The corrupt Linux Foundation and the infiltrated OSI have nothing to do with software freedom; in fact, they actively work to undermine it and those who speak about it
What they try to tell us is, monopolists have taken over “Open Source” (and hence “won”)
Summary: Don’t fall for the deceitful illusion that monopolies hijacking what they’ve dubbed the “Open Source” ‘movement’ is somehow a ‘win’ or an accomplishment for society at large; the corporate media loves to perpetuate this script, at the expense of actual software freedom
LOOK no further than the Linux Foundation (the real foundation) to understand what a growing number of people have begrudgingly come to accept; we’re not really “winning” but we’re told that we’ve “won” in the same way Hippies were told they had won the antiwar cause. Yeah, like endless wars have stopped since…
“To a lot of people “Open Source” now means GitHub, which is actually proprietary and Microsoft-controlled.”As we put it recently, we’re being thrown a bone. Companies that bomb dark-skinned people tell us they're making progress by banning words that allude to dark-skinned people (if we’re to assume that slavery is limited to one set of ethnicities). Anyway, we mean no disrespect to the cause of diversity and we welcome good conduct or even a Code of Conduct provided it's properly enforced, not just by companies that bomb and attack charities. In reality, as we've repeatedly witnessed, projects are being separated from their founders… by companies that literally profit from separating parents from their babies (yes, we're looking at you, Microsoft!) and they tell us it’s for the better good… or something. They ‘protect’ us… from ‘unruly’ leaders.
“Let’s talk about Free software and software freedom; nothing would piss them off more than the realisation that they blew countless billions trying to squash the ‘wrong’ thing…”Right now, as 2020 approaches winter (and the end of the year) we must come to realise that “Open Source” means nothing; if it means anything — or if it ever meant anything to begin with — it’s an attack on or a distracting prop (diversion away from) software freedom. To a lot of people “Open Source” now means GitHub, which is actually proprietary and Microsoft-controlled. As if gifting Microsoft (outsourcing everything to Microsoft) is ‘opening’ or ‘liberation’ or ‘goodwill’…
If we wish to make progress — real progress — we need to abandon this mirage of “Open Source” and let OSI die with it (look who controls the OSI this year).
For many years we used the term “Open Source” (since inception of this site), but that doesn’t mean we should perpetually refuse to let it go. Even Bruce Perens, who came up with its definition, thinks it's time to move on. To Microsoft, with GitHub, the next phase is proprietary software spun as “open” ("Inner Source") — in effect the “extinguish” phase. Let’s abandon what Microsoft has in effect hijacked before the “extinguish” is completed. Let’s talk about Free software and software freedom; nothing would piss them off more than the realisation that they blew countless billions trying to squash the ‘wrong’ thing… █
Not only Linus Torvalds and RMS lose their temper at times
Summary: The notorious “hearty fuck you” E-mail (which led to apology) shows that temper tantrums happen everywhere (this is the OSI’s co-founder; the other OSI co-founder is arguably a lot worse)
Summary: ESR’s vigilante culture and defence of gun crime (or domestic terrorism) is an ongoing and recurring theme; and they tell us that “Open Source” is more business-friendly than Free software…
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Guest Editorial Team
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