Free Software Needs Watchdogs, Too
Gentle lapdogs prevent self-regulation and transparency
THERE is nothing wrong with being opinionated when the opinions are supported by actual evidence. Being controversial does not mean being wrong. Many scientific facts (objective truths if not axioms) are considered "controversial", sometimes because of people's feelings.
Companies do not want journalists, they want publishers or "writers" who just parrot their lies under the guise of "journalism". The PR industry took over. This is really bad. Rebuttals are therefore more necessary than ever.
Recently we've been reposting many articles from Daniel Pocock. Moments ago we reposted an article in which he explains how companies like Mozilla and Red Hat are sponsoring or propping up "moderate" replacements of the real thing to get away with their more controversial moves while demonising the original (FSF). Does he have evidence of this? Absolutely. The main pieces of evidence are private E-mails from the leadership of the FSF and the leadership of FSF-EEE (no typo there).
The ad hominem attacks are expected, as are the threatening moves both Pocock and us have been subjected to. The aggressors can start it from nothing, e.g. some malicious office gossip or rumour that's totally false (like making up a story; in my last job someone spread a false rumour about Rianne being pregnant and we never found out who fabricated this falsehood).
In Pocock's case, they made up a lie about him dating a GSoC (Google's programme) or Outreachy student; this falsehood was spread if not invented by Google staff, apparently in order to demonise him and make it seem like he had done something very inappropriate, distracting from the simple fact he was exposing misconduct in GSoC. He exposed bad things in FSF-EEE as well. He spoke about issues in Debian. The projection tactics served to distract from what he had shown. Some people were foolishly spreading the falsehoods; they repeated uttered those same lies in IRC, even in our own IRC network. It's not only false, it's a form of defamation, and spreading it in IRC means accountability is harder. Bully de Blanc encouraged this culture of Chinese whispers in the darkness (e.g. secret mailing lists or private messages in IRC; some people spread horrible libel in private messages in our IRC network, including "pedo" libel against Richard Stallman).
Based on the amount of old material available, Techrights will be covering Debian scandals a lot until some time in summer or autumn. The goal is not to "bash" Debian (our server and desktops use Debian) but to highlight internal issues, hoping this can lead to a resolution. Debian is mostly - but not only - a community-run distro. Microsoft and Google bribe and influence it via SPI 'donations' and Mark Shuttleworth is controlling it by poaching the Debian Developers he 'fancies'. These MUST NOT be taboo subjects. It is something EVERYONE needs to know UPFRONT.
So is Debian truly independent? Sort of. But no.
These Debian issues are not even unique to Debian. They serve to highlight how corporations besiege Freedom-centric technical communities. Debian is still the "base" of most important GNU/Linux distros. The people implicitly "in charge" of Debian work for companies, and not always 'tasteful' companies. It's important to understand whose money controls the project. Many of the servers are totally controlled by Google. They're "donated", but at what cost?
The Free software world needs a share of dissenting voices and watchdogs/guard dogs. Companies like Google want you to hate them; don't be manipulated by the likes of Google. As a reminder, Google paid a salary to someone who was defaming me and then started threatening me and my wife (because his defamation had backfired). █
