Why We're Revealing the Ugly Story of What Happened at Libre-SOC
Aside from the fact that some details are public already
We've been sitting on this story for a very long time, not sure how responsible it would be to make/take it public because if the project gets named ("Libre-SOC"), then names of people can be implied. However, seeing this developing European blunder (still unsolved), we've decided that, on balance, the public interest outweighs the privacy of people we won't name anyway. Also, this week we learned about GNOME Foundation secretly expelling an elected board member who had brought a lot of European funding to the project!
There seems to be a sophisticated attack on Free software that is disguised as "manners", so nobody calls it a spade (for it would seem absurd on the surface). Well, one way to react is, give more visibility to what they do and want not to be seen. Let the public decide. Put out the facts, not some phony narratives in social control media (lacking context, groupthink rules).
As an associate of ours put things, writing on the issue is crucial as "it is also becoming essential to find ways to either retake control of the projects or substitute new ones. Some of them have so much inertia now that even a major, consistent effort would require generations. It ties into campaign finance reform in the US because without that there is the continued over-accumulation and over-centralisation of wealth, which in turn is used to buy influence and outright control." [1, 2]
The way I personally see things, the above is a lot to do with the powerful interests ("elite class") forcing the (re)takeover of the means of production, even if built independently and licensed liberally by the masses. Stuff like GitHub is an obscene example of the takeover. It's not free hosting any more than a barn or beds in the plantations (slave farms) were 'free housing'.
Recently we saw writings about this issue being framed as "nazi" - as if simply challenging some corporate takeover of non-profit organisations makes one a "nazi" (IBM employees even called a Jewish man, Mr. Lunduke, "nazi"; someone should give them a quick lesson about IBM's role in the Holocaust). As an associate explains it: "I hope Lunduke realises that those are generic astroturfers and shills working for Microsoft and while they make the attacks sting on a personal level, they are nonetheless not personal and out to eliminate all proponents of Software Freedom or anyone else who has crossed Microsoft and the interests which back Microsoft against the world's nations and populations."
In the case of the story we're about to tell, Microsoft isn't the culprit, however the methods seem eerily similar and the net effect is the same.
We need to listen to the exploited victims, not to ultra-wealthy corporations with their professionally-composed (to lie/mislead) press releases. In the case of GNOME Foundation Shamans, they spent thousands of pounds (or dollars) on lawyers to put lipstick on secret expulsions. █
