Who is Left to Speak for the Community and for Science (Not for Corporations)?
Predators claim to speak for us
TAINTED people or systematic tainting of organisations is a real, growing problem. We see this quite a lot in the OSI, which became a de facto front group of Microsoft. This is ruining online discourse and censors the Web. Over time it tends to gravitate towards whatever large corporations want it to be and it censors opposing views (sometimes using some Code of Conduct). Based on simple observations of a consistent track record, a Code of Conduct will always end up being muscled, manipulated, bent and distorted to justify sanctioning people with or without a valid argument/charisma who express their views about powerful people/corporations. They can twist anything as racism, sexism etc. post hoc.
The media is largely the same.
LWN is meant to seem independent and readers-funded, but nothing could be further from the truth. It is not that simple. The conflict of interest they don't tell you about at LWN: Corbet is in the Linux Foundation, so his worldview is slanted by Zemlin et al. Newly-hired writers likewise. Zonker comes from Red Hat (and others), so he focuses on Red Hat things, he promotes them every week. The other new hire (Daroc Alden) is LGBT, hence covers many trans developers/things there. We all have biases, but let them be known (at the very least).
Speaking of a conflict of interest, consider what we published hours ago. The real Open Invention Network [1, 2] (i.e. not what it tells us in its shameless self-promotional messages) has done little to protect the Free software community; it just protects its largest or founding members, i.e. monopolistic conglomerates. The Open Invention Network used to contact me by phone and E-mail, but when I began speaking critically about it that basically stopped. I contacted their CEO (whom I had spoken to many times before) regarding the latest article, prior to publication even (in the name of fact-checking and opportunity to respond), but he never responded.
The Open Invention Network (OIN) is inherently imperialistic. It controls, e.g. by funding so-called "organisations" through so-called "events", what should otherwise have fronted for the community. So Microsoft, IBM et al control European policy, e.g. regarding software patents, via FSFE. Consider the curious case of Polina Malaja and the FSFE. Remember that OIN employed another person (Deb) who played a leading role in the campaign of defamation against Richard Stallman. These people keep suppressing important topics and silencing (or 'canceling') people who address those topics, e.g. software patents. █