Why the Articles From Daniel Pocock (FSFE, Fedora, Debian Etc. Insider) Still Matter a Lot
THE computer scientist (or Software Engineer) Daniel Pocock is no longer affiliated with the bodies above (there are more, including Mozilla). He said "too much" about the true nature of them, which meant they panicked and tried to hide the evidence (or discredit the messenger).
This is typical. This is a political strategy.
Should we therefore ignore or forget about the evidence? No. Revisionism will try to suggest that "it's not true" or "not true anymore" or "it's old anyway"...
Most of the problems became and remained largely or entirely unsolved. So they need to be brought to broader visibility/attention/audience.
One upside of what they did to Pocock is, they inadvertently served to show what the CoC is misused for, affirming many people's suspicions (scepticism of the CoC proponents).
It's more moral to side with PoCoC than with some corporate CoC (Code of Censorship). We need integrity and honesty, not boot lickers who punish others with impunity.
In prior years Pocock did a lot to explain the 'insides' (or corpus) of programs like GSoC and Outreachy, which are a clever way to pass hush money or bribes (and you cannot oppose that kind of bribes; that would seem like bigotry). He provided ample evidence of the key assertions. Whether people ignore the evidence or not, it's still out there in the open. No more secrecy.
Pocock is a proponent of decent encryption, so stopping his publication rhythm/pace hasn't been easy. He's articulate and resourceful, and he has no intention of stepping back.
It is undeniable that Pocock is feared by the likes of Mark Shuttleworth and he has been getting under the skin of GAFAM insiders (to use a polite term) inside communities and projects, askew and detached from the goals of these communities and projects, which aren't (or originally were not) a part of GAFAM.
If folks surrender to the agenda of GAFAM (or front groups of theirs, such as the Microsoft OSI and the Linux Foundation), there won't be freedom left, just locks on the bootloader (the keys are Microsoft's, not yours) and intensive spying at every level.
Pocock is running for MEP [1, 2] and, if successful, it can help bring his message to a larger set of people, even people well outside the realm of Free software and the Web. That can motivate politicians/lawmakers to do something about the matter at a higher level.
Pocock will be fine. We'll continue to republish older articles of his. Due to intense pressure and repeated threats we delayed this, but it's better later than never. Pocock's homepage has been updated and looks as captured below. █
Photos licensed CC BY 3.0 (source)