GNOME, Microsoft, and GitHub: The Lack of Reporting on Abusive Colleagues Contributed to Profound Media Vacuum (or Blackout), Now Resorting to SLAPPs
This lack of morality/courage has helped enable further abuse, lining up more victims
We are gaining a lot of momentum in our effort to combat SLAPPs. One very famous person said "keep up the good work." That was yesterday. Remember that Techrights turns 18.5 in a few weeks and the next few years will be spent writing about SLAPPs. Throwback to "Boycott Novell" days? Maybe. None of this stuff is an "island". The same people are still around, albeit scattered. Some of them became multi-millionaires by serving Microsoft, more so if they did so inside competitors.
Techrights is a very old site and many early articles covered topics like GNOME and Novell's Miguel de Icaza (as a reminder, and as publicly confirmed by Jeremy Allison, de Icaza had helped engineer the sellout/selloff of Novell to Microsoft). Nowadays he's busy in Twitter ("X"), relaying somewhat antisemitic material like that same ilk. But let's leave politics out of it. It's worth revisiting: "At the End Microsoft Pays/Hires to Reward Its 'Moles' or 'Footsoldiers'"
Yes, this is all very relevant to Novell because that's where 'former' Microsofter Nat Friedman worked before hopping back to Microsoft, promoting .NET and then leading the greatest code plunder in human history (removing licences from code).
Will this be a repeatable motif? For sure! Because it's all connected! The above comes from Miguel de Icaza's own blog by the way.
For those who lack the full context (CodePlex, Outercurve and so on), rest assured that all those articles remain unaltered and uncensored. We never censored any articles (redacting names is another matter). Since we didn't bother with social control media* and we fully preserved all IRC logs, all the way back to 2008, one can go backwards and study what led to harassment against my whole family [1, 2], having done the same to my employer for many years (we documented this, too). We always kept copies right here in this site, so nothing was lost over the years, it only got older (we are working on full site search these days). It's hard to hide past harassment and even violent threats. The evidence is all there.
What's more, interest in this site continues to grow, much to the regret of Novell's last CEO (many other sites have since then gone offline, so our record of past events became more dominant and unchallenged).
Today we'd like to discuss the roles played by Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman. We'll revisit that some more in the future. They're not outsiders to all this. They both "left" [1, 2] Microsoft at around the same time their GNOME buddy sent us SLAPPs (after he himself had repeatedly defamed people), only days or weeks apart from our long series about their “best friend” Alex Graveley (too late to hide that; this PR move only attracts even more attention to the cover-up).
At the end, everyone involved will be held accountable for it (Microsoft, Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman are just some of the "high level" figureheads).
Microsoft is the umbrella and a hostile force that is embedded inside organisations. Don't lose sight of that; keep both eyes on the ball.
Why didn't they talk about any of this in public?
Miguel de Icaza only privately spoke about issues with the Serial Strangler, who was his close friend. He was extremely upset (as we covered at the time) when it "leaked out" to the public. Miguel de Icaza and others (like Chris Toshok, same circle) allegedly knew for a long time that Graveley was basically insane and dangerous (the former bit makes it a lot harder to hold him legally accountable, according to Toshok; he might plead "insane" or "not sober").
Graveley is so crazy that he was allegedly fantasising about sex with corpses or women in comas while saying incredibly racist things about women. Miguel de Icaza was aware of this. Rest assured, they know each other very well and worked together.
So now we get SLAPPed because we brought up what many others knew but were afraid to talk about? Miguel de Icaza's buddy begged me to hide what he had done and then started issuing threats to me (not just him), using the exact same lawyer and barrister that Matthew J. Garrett had picked (Graveley even publicly wrote about this). The timing was a giveaway many times before. They became sloppy and negligent. Now they're aware of it, but it's too late. So they keep quiet.
Having spoken to victims of Graveley, who is a serial strangler of women, what really upset me was learning that the media was informed about it but chose to ignore it. It chose to protect violent men by not reporting on the violence (even when court and police documents existed; they were not sealed).
Similarly, media facilitators of theirs in sites like ZDNet and Ars Technica did not properly inform the public about what Matthew J. Garrett had done. Some people get a free pass, even when they behave badly and cause damage [1, 2] that's still visible.
It is more of the "Journalistic Malpractice" we casually spoke of. They also covered up for Bill Gates, never mentioning an actual arrest at his home for pedophilia. Nowadays they help him lie about why Melinda dumped him. As recently as last week she told the media it was because of Jeffrey Epstein. She said so candidly and unequivocally. How many times need she repeat it?
So why would the media keep covering up and even lying for aggressive and dangerous men? Why does it later wonder or even publicly moan that people turn away, looking for "alternative" (often false) news?
Because it's afraid of them?
Or because it gets bribed by them (or their employer, e.g. Microsoft)?
The only thing Graveley hasn't yet attempted with us was bribery. Not that it would work; if he offered to pay for censorship, it would just become yet another scandal for him. It's all about reputation, not truth. The sole aim here is censorship, no matter the means or the costs.
Speaking of Ars Technica, more so after Ryan Paul left 11 years ago, we continue to hold it responsible for a lot of the current mess (that company also lies about Aaron Swartz as recently as this year). It doesn't protect women, let alone hire any. It doesn't care about children. Just quoting something someone sent us about Ars Technica's this pervert and "secure boot" booster (regarding the last installment), an anonymous reader said: "Appalling behaviors. But there's no way to defend a child molester and especially not one that was so gross that it was obvious all along even before the criminal charges."
"His X account is still up for anyone who wants to look at it. "Pumpkin Fright". Where he talks about wanting to expose himself at work and walking around his house naked, and "double fisting" the Starbucks."
Good thing that Ars Technica promotes "social justice" and not senior moderators and editors who ghost(write) Microsoft while they rape children (and some colleagues are aware of it and do nothing about it).
Note the sarcasm. Ars Technica knew it was employing a pedophile (the colleagues knew), but it didn't do or say anything until an arrest, which was made not owing to those colleagues but an FBI sting. Even then Ars Technica kept all of the pedophile's articles (lots of "secure boot" promotion and Microsoft "planted" pieces) online.
It is saddening that the so-called "IT industry" - along with the media mouthpieces of this industry - is full of opportunists, cowards, and inconsiderate gits**. They're enabling really bad people, who instead of apologising for bad behaviour are merely SLAPPing (with reckless "guns for hire"; they're broke enough [1, 2] to avoid caring/studying merits of frivolous claims they're advancing, even for fanatics) those who speak about such behaviour and doing so while hiding in another continent (in dad's home or a forest). They repeatedly refuse to say who funds them. Don't worry, we're on it***. Truth prevails at the end and victims will be compensated one way or another (perseverance is required for true justice, settling is not an option as it typically rewards abusers). █
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* "Last time we posted to Twitter was 2 years ago." the sister site said last night.
** An abject lack of courage and of principles killed Sirius Open Source, which a former colleague is suing right now (not related to the pension fraud). We'll cover this when a verdict comes out from the Tribunal.
*** You can run, but you can't hide [1, 2]. Not eternally anyway.
